Goal-wise this reminds me of the Memex [1], albeit with automated creation and display of associative trails.

I wonder, though, if the manner in which it presents information in the Emacs UI (namely, as a list of headlines over a part of the screen that is continuously updated) could worsen understanding and natural memorization in the way some research shows news tickers on television do [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex

[2] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08838158509386593, http://blog.lib.umn.edu/stgeorge/artofscientificpresentation...