Infotop - An Information and Communication Infrastructure for Knowledge Work

The desktop metaphor has been helpful as long as the types, formats and amounts of contents to be administered were limited. Due to the increase in size and complexity of contents, much of the original desktop's functionality has moved into applications, replacing the desktop as the central view to collections of contents. We will outline an environment based on knowledge management (KM) concepts, that can better cope with the requirements of knowledge workers. We will analyze shortcomings of the desktop for supporting KM-related tasks and motivate its replacement by what we call infotop, a new metaphor to interact with personal knowledge environments.