LAME DUCKS
AND
FLYING DOGS
Information in the digital era
……. (and why you can’t always get what you want)
Colin Mc Cullough, eMedia, 14 December 2001
The aim of this presentation?
- to show we expect too much from today’s web
- to show the web was designed for humans not machines
- to show why it should be designed for machines
- to point (tentatively) to how things MAY improve
FAR
Which brings up back to ……… ?
LAME DUCKS
AND
FLYING DOGS
Why such a silly example?
Because it shows the web is not contextual
Because it shows we have created in the web a cyber-bicycle for coast to coast or intercontinental travel
…and because
then we complain!
So let us look at
and
‘s
‘s
Any ideas what we find on a search engine?
Lame duck?
Lame duck?
An excellent Californian wine(only $8.50 a bottle) ……..
A small publishing house ………
A way of describing LOTS (and lots) of people …….
….and very little about our aquatic friend, the duck
We can repeat this exercise for our canine friend
And the results would be similar
‘s
The flying DOG
Basically, therefore,
…………. we have a communication problem
The stupid web doesn’t understand what I want
Why?
Simple answer!
The web finds words not concepts
It has nothing to do with the way I think…. and could care even less about it
And don’t complain…it was made to do just that
So, I’m right – we expect to much
But what about my claim?????
It’s designed for humans …not machines?
And even worse, and I am telling you
I think that’s bad!
My defense is simple mathematics
The WWW has about 2 billion visible pages
They increase by some 7.5 million per day(that’s 312,500 pages an hour)(only 5,200 pages a minute)(O.K….it’s only about 90 pages per second)
It’s the largest knowledge repository in the history of mankind
Don’t use nail scissors to cut the lawnThis is a job for the cyber lawnmower
If we are not to drown in a tidal wave of information
AND WE ARE ALREADY DROWNING
(It’s called surfing sickness)
I suggest we need help?
But what kind of help?
Option I
If the web is for people then get people to do it?
Possible solution but very impractical
When you’ve indexed today’s 7.5 million pages
Got back and do yesterday’s again – many of those 7.5 million have changed in the meantime
So the idea is ?
Where do we go from here?
Option number 2
We could describe the resources we are putting on the web so that computers can find them
We could even agree on a common vocabulary for doing this
Feasible and partially implemented
We get out what we put in!
Info on the web without structure, without description
=A public library- without shelves- without catalogue- and (more importantly) without a librarian
Nothing but a big heap of books Enter!
But we will be able to do more than that
We can INFER:
If A = B and B = C
We can INFER that A=C
This in the context of networked information retrieval?
Happy duck(not lame)
Both interesting
AND
Very frightening in my view
Why interesting???
It means:
Searching the web for the word “train” won’tgive me the time of the next TGV from Paristo Lyons
It will give me train, bilden, former, formare
The search will know what I am looking for (conceptually)
This idea can be put in one term
THE SEMANTIC WEB
(Happy duck =Happy web surfer)
Why frightening?
What else can we expect in the future from the web?
A few thoughts on how it can improve
1. It can become multi-directional2. It can mirror sources3. It can ensure more reliable access4. It can remove the hyper from the
text
Other issues it will address?
Copyright!Intellectual Property Rights!
In short the web can and will become more human
Less of a LAME DUCK
Where even dogs can fly
(P.S.
is a BAT
found in rain forests in Thailand)