Integration Tasks

The aim of integration is to clear communication channels of noise, push shared knowledge to the border of the organization, and store valuable expertise.

E-mail overload can be reduced by specifying discussion topics in advance. This format is supported in traditional e-mail threads, and more specifically in discussion forums or wikis. Filters are another approach, especially for push-type services such as wireless handhelds.

Mobile intelligence, or actionable information, must stay synchronized with the task as it changes. This process requires thresholds for usefulness, access rights for updates and performance monitoring, and virtual collaboration. While the location of the infosphere might vary (local or remote server, phone storage, etc..), the user must be trained for information collection and on-going participation in the fusion method.

For continuous or long one-time tasks the infosphere elements can be commoditized into prediction markets that will gauge changes in the elements's usefulness as more is learned. After a task is completed these elements can be cast into metrics for benchmark monitoring.

Longer term infosphere integration can be accomplished through the use of ontologies. These task-related vocabularies are represented in data structures that are schemes for XML tags. Through tagging, documents relevant to the task become a knowledgebase; the ability to reference information contained in documents is the basis of the Semantic Web (Web 2.0).