Abstract
In recent years, the amount and the variety of available machine-readable data have substantially increased. To cope with the mass of machine-processed data, new technologies have been introduced, such as high density storage devices, and fancy graphic displays useful for information transformation and access. New approaches have also been considered for processing the stored data based on the construction of knowledge bases representing the contents and structure of the information, and the use of expert system techniques to control the user-system interactions. This note provides a brief evaluation of the new information processing technologies, and of the software methods proposed for information manipulation.