In Bill Gates' article, “The Road Ahead: How ‘intelligent agents’ are taking our information democracy to the next stage.”  that appeared in Newsweek 19 Dec 2005,
 

Most of us now live in an ‘information democracy… But while we’ve gone a long way towards optimizing how we use information, we haven’t yet done the same for knowledge… ‘mind-mapping’ software can also be used as a digital  ‘blank slate’ to help connect and synthesize ideas and data— and ultimately create new knowledge.”