BioBike (formerly BioLingua) is a computational biology-centered implementation of
an integrated, on-line, programmable biological knowledge base
(from the BioBike FAQ). What I find fascinating about BioBike is the idea of extending an operating system with a knowledge management system such that non-programmers can write knowledge management programs for their own use with comparative ease. As I understand it, once you create some knowledge (as a frame, which is kind of like an object for AI), that knowledge is then automatically and easily available to everyone else. Knowledge can be composed of actions as well as data in BioBike, making BioBike a domain-specific object-oriented (underneath) knowledge management programming environment for non-programmers. Instead of users having to ask IT to develop relatively simple things (how many Perl and shell scripts have we all written for users that were < 10 lines?), users can develop these kinds of applications themselves, freeing the user's time for their particular research while also freeing the developer's time for enhancements to the main system.
I do wonder about a KnowOS-like system implemented in Perl6... (BioBike is written in LISP.)
