<$BlogRSDUrl$> Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Internet Happenings, Events and Sources


Sunday, June 06, 2004  

The Evolution - and Future Travels - Of Search Technology
http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=148

In this trip down the Memory Lane of information retrieval -- or search -- technology, author Ramana Rao begins at the beginning, with an excerpt from a 1945 Vanity Fair article titled "As We May Think" that foretold the image of a scholar aided by a machine: "a device in which an individual stores all his books, records and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility." Today, when some 25 million Web searches an hour are conducted, that vision is quickly becoming reality. Rao finds that, across the decades, two dichotomies stand out clearly in the evolution of search. "The first is the contrast between focusing on the one hand on narrowly defined technological approaches and on the other hand on a broader understanding of the full problem set and the possible solutions. The second is the contrast between working out ideas in research versus spreading them commercially." Essentially, the longstanding challenge has been matching technological capabilities to real information needs. Rao concludes that the "semantic Web," may eventually come to pass, but only with the birth of systems that support human-computer symbiosis.

posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:15 AM
archives
subject tracers™