Abstracting this model for other purposes

The rag sorting example involves the transfer of physical goods. But, this same structure can be used to bring people together people for the purpose of exchanging information or finding collaborative partners.

Imagine now, all the millions of people on the Internet. Imagine them each needing a special piece of information that somewhere some of the other millions of people on the Internet might have. Wouldn't such a structure be useful for bringing together those who need to have a particular piece of information with those who might have it?

Such a structured space could also be used to bring people who want to create e-businesses together with people who can help them. It can be used to bring people with software products together with those who have a need for those products. It can bring service providers together with those who have a need for those services. It can bring experts and specialist together with the people who need their specialist help. It can bring together people with money with those who need it.

Returning to Tillman Pearce's initial problem of creating a database for cancer treatment. Wouldn't this be a useful infrastructure to facilitate the flow of information in this particular subject area? Patients with similar types of cancer could meet to share experiences, exchange knowledge about treatment strategies, costs and locations of specialist treatment centres. As this could be made available to anyone in the world, it could bring in opinions and knowledge of practices and treatment facilities from every corner of the planet.

Meeting places could be established based upon any number of criteria, so that patients can go to special areas to discuss a particular treatment option, a promising line of research, methods of coping with pain, drug testing programs, etceteras. All it would take to set up a any new meeting area would be to add a new category to one of the lists. This can be done by the users themselves if they were given the facility (this would be the function of a bot, as we shall see in the next chapter).

Similarly, in any area where there are too many people or too much information to deal with, a tree like structure can be created in a people space to filter out fast and efficient routes through the confusion and noise to where solutions to problems can be found.