The communication inside organisations is nowadays limited to raw messaging provided by electronic mail or conferencing facilities. Simple mechanisms like electronic mail may be enhanced through the integration of organisational information that optimizes information dissemination, minimizes information loss and desambiguates messages in an organisational setting. To some extent, this organisational communication enhancement is an instance of the so called Message Routing Problem. Enhanced multimedia communication facilities. New facilities like video-conferencing are yet to be fully exploited.
Current systems provide raw channels for interpersonal interaction.
Efforts are being carried out to augment these systems through automatic indexing of recorded video information, video digest production, content analysis and extraction. The most significant and winning example of distributed and large scale information system is clearly the World Wide Web. We see this system as a powerful infrastructure for information sharing, but also as a motivation for further innovation in the design of mechanisms for navigation in large information bases. Our approach can be summarized as an attempt to manage the uncertainty and flexibility of a world wide information base, through high level constructs that do not require static and rigid name systems, link managers, or heavy administration services.