Yet again, I have found another implementation of the ideas I expressed three years ago in my data links paper. This one is an open source Gnome version, called Dashboard. It looks great, and is almost exactly what I envisioned when I wrote my data links paper. Scary.
Some people say that you only get one truly good idea in your life. It looks like I might have already blown it. Seriously though, while I think that all of these implementations (Creo Six Degrees, Devon Think, Dashboard) are very early and rough, I think that this sort of software will become necissary in the future. In fact, if I can be very bold, I would state that this sort of software may replace the desktop, folders and files metaphor for navigating our personal computers. We have already shed this metaphor when exploring the global information space, so why not do the same on our PCs?