Last Update Dec. 24, 2008

Navigative City of Books (Tosho-gai System) Project

Books, which are the paramount concentration of human wisdom, can form various arrangements based on information such as contents or bibliographies, to express the various relationships and create contexts of wisdom.

We consider books to be the basic unit of information in this project. We will build an information space of knowledge in which the books are stored in bookshelves and in which the books are arranged and the bookshelves are positioned based on relationships and meanings. We will electronically express this information space as 3-dimensional "City of Books", because humans can easily memorize and recall features of a city, such as buildings, roads, neighborhoods, open spaces, and so on. And we will research and develop the "Navigative City of Books (Tosho-gai System)", that is an information space to have knowledge editing functions, in which relationships between various knowledge are freely produced, new knowledge is created, and the cyber world is interfaced with the real world, depending on the context such as the situation and intention of a user and the interaction between a user and system.

"Tosho-gai" map drawn by Seigow Matsuoka

This project starts from a city of books "Tosho-gai", based on the design of Mr. Seigow Matsuoka, which induces people freely to intellectual trips and becomes an platform for knowledge editing.

This project uses the "Tosho-gai System" to be Knowledge Representation Media for systematizing knowledge of specialists and for improving user's ability to associate and recall, acquire knowledge, and communicate with each other and specialized knowledge. The system is also used as a platform to create new knowledge.

Since the year 2007, we have been developing the Tosho-gai system applied to a "narrative navigation" of City of Kyoto using a portable telephone as an access device.

Objectives

Subjects

We will research and develop the "Navigative City of Books（Tosho-gai System )" in this project. We expect that new knowledge and wisdom and new improved technology will be created from understanding the relationships between culture, information and communication technology, and humans. The goal of the research and development is to combine universally accepted knowledge and wisdom without it being affected by different cultures.

Actual technology development:

Tosho-gai system R&D

 

Systematizing specialists knowledge and constructing very large knowledge base

We are developing a knowledge base that is in the form of "a city of books" and that will enable humans to easily memorize and recall information because of systematizing specialists knowledge based on books as Knowledge Representation Media. We will newly propose the technology for constructing a large-scale knowledge base.

Constructing a dynamic knowledge base

We are showing a data model which is based on information obtained using the position and context from the city of books and information depending on a user's situation, intention, and edit history. We will research and develop methods to construct the knowledge base based on user's contexts and interaction.

Practical use of specialists knowledge

We will research and develop mechanisms to gather, reconstruct, and utilize systematized specialists knowledge in response to a user's interest.

Knowledge creation

We will research mechanisms to share each user’s knowledge inspiration with other users and form the community knowledge.

Members