Structuring information in a distributed hypermedia system

This paper addresses some particular issues pertaining to the problem of automatically structuring informal knowledge available on the Internet through a distributed hypermedia system like the World-Wide Web (WWW). It presents a new approach to the integration of hypertext and hypermedia technology with Knowledge Acquisition (KA) which deals with knowledge before the process of formalization. This approach coordinates aspects of automatic computation of nodes in hyperspace through dynamic Linking with intelligent mapping of the domain material by the application of qualitative spatial reasoning. This article reports results of multi-disciplinary research that involves cognitive aspects of human memory recovery and association, automatic linking of knowledge from a wide variety of sources (expressed in multiple formats), and an adequate visual interface to display large maps of supporting material.