Phubbing describes a social problem where others are being ignored in favor of a mobile
phone [3]. This may be done to retrieve information for clarification of facts for the
current discussion, but still hampers the flow of conversation. We propose a system,
which follows the discussion and returns related information in the background without
requiring users to pick up and actively interact with devices. We define this as ambient
search, featuring (i) real time information retrieval, (ii) presentation of topic-related
information snippets and (iii) passive behavior. The system will unobtrusively present
topic-related information snippets while the discussion continues. The dialog partners
may or may not use them to collaboratively retrieve more detailed information.
We place ambient search into the continuum between Human Computer Interaction
and Information Retrieval (IR). In this paper we introduce our first efforts towards the
realization of such a system.