Yahoo has tried to structure information into categories like a
traditional library. ALTAVISTA and Excite
have used key words. Starrting in the 1960's computer aided searches were
developed for military, scientific and medical journal articles.
Netscape, Oracle, IBM, SunMicrosystems and Everyone else ( Corel,
Novell ) see "Internet technologies are creating an opportunity for
new "information utilities," but no one yet knows what they will
look like, Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive of networking firm
Novell (NOVL) said in a speech this morning at Summer Internet World.
We are not at the end, but at the beginning of this journey,"
Schmidt said referring to the evolution of the Web. "We have a name,
the Web, but we may not have a destination"
Click for an image of the future :
Low Orbit satellites beam down to earth
- Communications, media, the nature of work and the wealth of nations.
MEDLINE is one of the world's
largest biomedical databases with over 8,000,000 references to journal
articles in all fields of medicine and related disciplines. MEDLINE is
the database offirst resort for most clinical and research questions.
HealthGate
offers the complete MEDLINE database, from 1966 to present.,
The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is the central research
and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages
and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects
for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are
both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional
military roles and missions and dual-use applications.
The computer revolution and the industry in Palo Alto was largely
a result of the ARPA's massive
ALTAVISTA is the result of a research project started in the summer
of 1995 at Digital's Research Laboratories in Palo Alto, California. By
combining a fast Web crawler with scalable indexing software, we were able
to build a large index of the Web in the Fall of 1995.
After two months of internal testing, we produced an even larger
index consisting of the full text of over 16,000,000 pages. We made the
site public on the 15th of December 1995. Within three weeks of launch,
the AltaVista site was handling over two million HTTP requests per day.
By May 1996, the index had grown to more than 30,000,000 pages, and the
site was receiving twelve million daily HTTP requests. As of November 1st,
we have surpassed 22 million hits per day!
The Software Behind AltaVista
The software was entirely developed in the research laboratories.
It is written in C under Digital Unix, makes heavy use of multi-threading
and the 64-bit addressing capabilities of the Alpha. This is the software
technology behind AltaVista Search software products.
Scooter
The world's fastest spider crawls the Web at 3 million pages a day.
A well-behaved creature, it obeys the Robots Exclusion Standard.
The Index Software
The indexer can crunch 1 GB of text per hour. It was used to build
the 40 GB index of the Web and serves multiple queries in parallel.
Our
Technology Refine, or Cow9? Cow9, you say? Come again? Cow9 is the
code name for AltaVista's hot new Refine feature, which lets you easily
narrow search results to just the information you need. Cow9, a collaborative
effort between researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation and Ecole des
Mines de Paris, sorts search results into logical topics and lets you choose
which particular categories you'd like to see.
How does Cow9 actually work? It uses statistical analysis-not human
interpretation-to sort the results from your searches into general topics.
Cow9 creates topics based on the search results. As the Web and its contents
change, the categories and search results Cow9 provides change automatically,
making AltaVista's usefulness and timeliness unmatched.
Excite
has enhanced its search capabilities in two critical ways:
Excite Search Wizard: see how this is used
on our Index page with many key words
Power search form:
Excite Power search form offers users the ability to extend or constrain
a search through basic pull-down lists and entry fields, bringing advanced
query features to the user without using advanced search language required
on other sites. For example, if a user searches on the word "bond",
he or she can Click on a box to specify if the search MUST include a related
word or MUST NOT include a related word. By pointing and clicking at the
constraints they want, users do not need to understand how to perform a
complex query such as a Boolean search.
and common misconceptions: the division between conventional
wisdom and reality.
In any case, there is something wrong with making the
survival of the fittest the guiding principle of a civilized society. This
social Darwinism is based on an outmoded theory of evolution just as the
equilibrium theory in economics is based on Newtonian physics.
The principle
which guides the evolution of the species is mutation, and mutation works
in a much more sophisticated way.
The species and their environment are
interactive, and one species serves as part of the environment for the
other species.
There is a two-way feedback mechanism, similar to reflexivity
in history, only in history the mechanism is driven not by mutation but
by misconceptions.
The controlling Paradigm:
George Soros has make billions when the common knowledge,
conventional wisdom is out of sink with reality. His central point is that
"objective reality" is separate from the ideas that describe
or explain what is being observed. Whatever our ideas about "science"
the physical reality doesn’t change. Our "uncertainty" or viewpoint
on physical quantum doesn’t change the phenomena itself.
On the other hand, public and expert perceptions
of human activities changes the nature of the activities themselves. Our
beliefs change our behavior and common social habits and ideas change who
we are and what we do. This is a reflective feedback loop between perceptions
and reality. Political theory, religious faiths, economic assumptions,
mass media chatter, advertising, hype, hope, needs, wants, passions or
truths and lies all make social reality "unknowable" and social
action can not be based on just objective reality and the facts.
Now the social reality of the human population on planet
earth is going through a basic mutation, a major change in form, new forms
of business evolution; where common perceptions and conventional wisdom
is often disconnected from the situation on the ground.
The mass emotion
on the death of Princess Diana, is unexplainable, so are stock markets,
the impacts of technology, political reform, capitalism in China, and the
major events of our lives.
There can be balanced judgments and clever analysis
but nothing close to certain knowledge.
Corruption:
It has always been with us. It is a constant cancerous force in all times and all cultures and with all people.
The question is when does it turn deadly ? We all carry "benign" cancers in our bodies but they have the potential to spread and kill the host. Concerns over money and influence in American Politics maybe be easily dismissed as more of the same but could be the early signs of a greater and deadly evil.
Clearly a society, company, school or village will progress if the members are moved by synergy, a system of shared benefit, all are busy and productive, have advanced skills and hardware, and pay attention to the laws of man and nature. In other words are like the Swiss, a small country divided into regions, cantons, villages with real and active participation.
The world is suffering with massive outbreaks of corrupt regimes in big places like Russia, some of the other former Soviet Republics, Indonesia, Pakistan, many countries in central Africa where the bunk of international aide is stolen and wars break out among gangs of thieves, the Balkans, Columbia, Argentina, Turkey, Mexico and much of Latin America, with parts of Urban China; all together corruption’s destructive forces effect more than half of mankind. It appears than the real issue of Y2K maybe corruption, disruption, violence, widespread allegations of crimes, and the alienation of the masses forming rage against the established swindlers and thieves as separatist movements.
Corruption is a product of size. While evil empires have been a mainstay of history, the bulk of people lived in agricultural villages where thieves had limited careers. Only in this century has big become common with the invention of technology to support extensive enterprises, private and public.
The iron law of oligarchy and bureaucracy takes over - the workers, citizens, and subjects are hard pressed to influence the management at the top.
The theory of countervailing forces becomes a battle of titans without meaningful human contact.
The battle of doctors, insurance companies, teaching hospitals and medical schools, drug companies, and political forces fails to deal with the human condition of being sick.
So we know the ailment and the cause.
The treatment is also clear - small is healthy. Small medical service centers with less administration and costly bureaucracy that don’t charge fees and don’t have to keep books on a per patient basis.
They treat anyone with a variety of cards on a per capita basis or as a public service - their cost paid from a variety of sources. In other words the plans as they exist in most of Europe and the rest of the industrial world.
The evil effects of size is clearly seen in the mega-school with dozens of assistant principals, area superintendents, area specialist, coordinators, teachers on assignment, and hundreds of special programs for questionable special needs such a the mythological attention deficit disorder. Since disability has been rewarded it has grown from 2 -3 % of the population with physical or mental disorders to 20 % to 30 % with some label attached as different, the number is up 10 times in the last 20 years and creates a huge self serving bureaucracy.
Political units can be smaller. Elections can be tiered - indirect so the people select those that select the next level. That was the design of the electoral college. Regional government is very useful.
There are few advantages of central administration and many disadvantages in the age of information. Balkanization is good. Confederation is good. All within a global economy.
The need for the great empire or nation state is less and less clear if it causes disorder rather than produces the keys to civilization: the rule of law, advanced technology, and increased participation of active creative people.
Clearly a society, company, school or village will progress if the members are moved by synergy, they all benefit, all are busy and productive, have advanced skills and hardware, and pay attention to the laws of man and nature. In other words are Swiss a regional small country.
It started with the Library of
Alexandria, a famous
ancient library, considered to have the greatest collection of books in
the ancient world. Founded by Ptolemy I Soter, king of Egypt, in the city
of Alexandria, it was expanded by his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus early
in the 3rd century BC.
The scholars in charge included the ablest Alexandrian
men ( and a few women) of letters of the period. Zenodotus of Ephesus,
whose specialty was the classification of poetry, was the first to hold
the position of librarian.
The poet Callimachus made the first general
catalog of the books and apparently was also librarian.
The two most noted
librarians were Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace,
both great editors and grammarians. In the time of Ptolemy II, according
to one historian, the main library in the Alexandrian Museum contained
nearly 500,000 volumes, or rolls, and an annex in the Temple of Serapis
contained some 43,000 volumes.
Dewey Decimal Classification,
in library science, a method of classifying knowledge
for the purpose of cataloging books and other library materials, devised
by Melvil Dewey. Under this system all knowledge is divided into ten main
classes, each of which is designated by a 100-number span.
Library of Congress Classification,
in library science, a method of classifying knowledge
for the purpose of cataloging books and other library materials, devised
by the staff of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Within each of these classes, material
is arranged from general considerations to specific treatments and from
theory to practical applications; specific topics are indicated by combinations
of capital letters, and further subject breakdowns by 3-digit numbers.
The classification scheme is continually revised.
Unlike the Dewey Decimal Classification
system, the LC system makes it possible to indicate specific aspects of
a subject without long, cumbersome numerical designations. For example,
within the N (Fine Arts) classification, NA indicates architecture, NB
sculpture, ND painting, NK decorative arts, and so on. ND 813 would be
used for books on Spanish painting, and ND 813 G7 would indicate a book
specifically about the Spanish painter Francisco José de Goya y
Lucientes.
Encyclopedists,
the writers of the 18th-century French Encyclopédie,
ou dictionnaire raissoné de sciences, des arts et des métiers
(Encyclopedia, or Systematic Dictionary of Sciences, Arts, and Trades),
commonly called the Encyclopédie. It was edited by the French
philosopher Denis Diderot in Paris between 1751 and 1772 and voiced the
advanced opinions of the time in philosophy, politics, and religion.
The
contributors were many great French writers of the day, including Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm.
See Encyclopedia.
Encyclopedia
or Encyclopaedia (derived
from Greek enkyklios paideia, "all-embracing education"),
term originally signifying instruction in all branches of knowledge, or
a comprehensive education in a specific subject. This concept gave rise
to the idea of collecting the materials of such instruction into a single
work, in which the contents and relations of the various arts and sciences
would be expounded systematically. Attempts to produce books of this kind
were made at an early date, although the name encyclopedia was not
given to such works until the 16th century.
All these works and many of their
successors were unsystematic or even chaotic in form and crude in substance.
The problem of coordinating or systematizing all the branches of science
remained a challenge until modern times.
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