The smallest piece of information is the individual document, which may contain many segments of information and is often too long for the user to read on-line. In some browsers, only one document is present on the screen at any given time making it difficult for users to compare two or more pieces of information. These various pieces of information, however, might be related to each other in different ways depending on the contents, the application, the problem being solved, each user's personal way of thinking and perception, or culture differences. These experiences by the computer graphics, visualization, and design researchers and the techniques they have developed for presenting information to people can lead the way to improving the organization of the information on the Web. 4. Reducing the Information Deluge from Searches and Queries Advances in interactive computer graphics and visualization hardware, software, and methods offer new possibilities for improving navigation through information dispersed over the Internet, and for reducing user frustrations by enabling the user to find specific information, to access that information, and to digest it.
Graphical interfaces can replace long textual lists.
More research and development on graphical representation of search results are needed. The research outlined above can enable the GII to be more effective and beneficial for education. For example, scattered resources could be assembled by a teacher when a particular combination of examples is needed to make a point. Similarly, rare radiological findings, residing in small numbers in the archives of many hospitals and medical schools, could be gathered over the GII and used in the classroom to teach the fine points of diagnosis. Providing Entirely New Applications Increasing bandwidth to and from the home can also provide entirely new applications.