The personal information revolution: from portable computing to the intelligent pocket assistant

The advent of pocket computing will create many new opportunities and dramatically affect the way in which people create and organize their personal information. Success of new applications will depend upon the ease with which information can be entered, organized, retrieved, and reorganized as needed. The essence of the pocket computer will be the way in which it manipulates and presents information with relatively few commands from the user. Ideally, the unit should understand what the user wants, even when these objectives are imprecisely stated. Various forms of intelligent assistance will be found to be desirable or even essential. These opportunities are explored from the information and service perspective. Several forms of intelligent assistance which will be desirable or even essential for the use of such an intelligent pocket assistant are discussed.<>