Human-Centered Information Spaces (HCIS) is a collaboration between UC San Diego Design Lab, MIT Visualization Group and the Centre for Digital Creativity at Aarhus University. We envision a future in which the existing world of documents and applications is linked to multiscale personalized information spaces in which dynamic visual entities behave in accordance with cognitively motivated rules sensitive to the context of tasks, personal and group interaction histories of activity. The heart of the project is to rethink the nature of computer-mediated information as a basis to begin to fully realize the potential of computers to assist with information-based activities. This requires challenging fundamental presuppositions that have led to today’s walled gardens and information silos. Our goal is to catalyze an international research community to rethink the nature of information as a basis for radically advancing the human-centered design of information-based work and helping to ensure the future is one of effective, convivial, and humane systems.