The breadcrumb folk tale and intelligent user interfaces

In the old German folk tale of Hansel and Gritel the two young children attempt to mark their trail by leaving breadcrumbs on their path as they walk through a forest. In information architecture, especially interface design or GUIs, breadcrumb refers to some sort of visual path that allows the user to see where they are in the interface and to retrace their steps if needed.The technology is called hyperlink connecting Univeral Resource Identifiers.Its the human psychology to virtually traverse through his thoughts on sorting out the infomration he needs.The words in the mind-space is connected through the virtual links tracing the inner thoughts in the process of the data quest.The cliche information at the tip of fingers ... The links in the web page you see in the browser are the virtual representation of information deep down in the cyberspace.Are we entering a metaphysical psyche warp of our mind through these portals? :P

A psychology paper from the University of Wichita shows that using the breadcrumbs in the model tends the users to use these shortcuts more .This is definitely a good approach to define the related entities and the users will be able to navigate through the huge data in web.Is it possible for an intelligence in web, some mention it as collective intelligence, converse to user using this tool of navigation?


As semantic technologies will become more prominent in near future internet information architecture,the user interfaces to communicate this collective intelligence effectively to user are expected to be simple and elegant.May be the touch screens and 3D interfaces will provide an immersive user interaction.What will the fastest way of traversal?

An old Buddhist monk revealed to his disciple that mind is the fastest traveler in this universe.. Will the future interfaces catch up with lightning speed of mind? We can expect warp holes in our web pages ? Will there be information teleporters on our desktops ( that sucks!)? Even hyper links are based on these ideologies .. may that will suffice.. The problem is we choose the path now ...

Ha there I saw an old paper describing about AI based interfaces.It says

Most researchers would agree that a system that can maintain a human dialogue would be considered intelligent (remember the Turing test?). The problem is that there are a lot of interfaces that we would consider intelligent, that do not look "human" in any sense at all. An example is the PUSH interface , which presents hypertext in a manner that is adapted to the user's current task. The system is controlled mainly through direct manipulation, but the output consists of a text where certain pieces of the text are "hidden" from view, to give a comprehensive overview of the pieces of text that are most relevant to the user in his or her current task. This very passive form of user adaptation does not in any way mimic human behaviour, but is constructed to be a natural extension of the hypertext view of information.

I like playing computer games.In games the interface , or the protagonists goals can be changed by the AI of the game as per the user interaction.I will say thats what happening in web.The information we seek will be based on the understandings made by a collective intelligence in the web.Suppose you want travel to a place during your vacation.. what if the application itself choose the best destination,information about it , the room,the flight ,the travelers tools.. so on to be displayed in the browser within a second..? Sounds cool even if you are your way back home with your personal intelligent assistant (possibly a future iphone !)See this movie made by Apple in 1980s , a film short that also imagines a future of computing via intelligent agents a long way back internet blips occurred. Link

In future choice wont be yours..