The memory extender personal filing system

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Abstract
The benefits of electronic information storage are enormous and largely unrealized. As its cost continues to decline, the number of files in the average user's personal database may increase substantially. How is a user to keep track of several thousand, perhaps several hundred thousand, files? The Memory Extender (ME) system improves the user interface to a personal database by actively modeling the user's own memory for files and for the context in which these files are used. Files are multiply indexed through a network of variably weighted term links. Context is similarly represented and is used to minimize the user input necessary to disambiguate a file. Files are retrieved from the context through a spreading-activation-like process. The system aims towards an ideal in which the computer provides a natural extension to the user's own memory.