A Step Toward More Relevant Search
Try out some of the prototypes on the Metadata Research Program page. I arrived there via David Weinberger’s Everything Is Miscellaneous Blog. Over the years I’ve searched Library of Congress records for non-internet related stuff, so have some experience in how bad their search can be unless you are a pro at it.
The “DARPA Unfamiliar Metadata Project …builds directly on several years research …on improved searching techniques. The Classification Clustering technique developed by Professor Ray Larson for the CHESHIRE I system will be used with probabilistic document retrieval algorithms developed by Dr Gey with support from the National Science Foundation.”
If only we could access or apply a Classification Clustering technique through personal modules/portals. Talk about user created relevance.
Reading reports found in the research areas, though, gives me the impression that the natural desire to achieve a universal and manageable standardization predominates. Why? I wonder if, like most such projects, the construction of this one can be completed in my lifetime, and I wonder further if there isn’t an earlier point than is usually considered at which adoption and use could become part of the development process. What used to be man against nature here becomes man against machine.
Machines want standardization, but man wants individualization.
Yes, I understand about stability issues. Stability can also be viewed, in science and technology, from the standpoint of flexibility combined with durability.
Here’s a goal, as I see it, for all of us. Let’s build a way to ‘compile’ the data of which man is composed. That has to translate into an evolutionary process, since we pesky humans refuse to freeze and get ‘captured’, as well as a collaborative one requiring our consent and participation. Until we do that man will always be able to break the machines, and the machines will never be able to catch us.
I’ve read that programmers did not believe that tagging would be widely adopted. Since I started this blog, my tag selection has gradually changed, but what would I garner by spending the time to review and improve 130 posts worth of tags? Wouldn’t such processes be much further ahead if their use wasn’t presented as an optional afterthought …if learning to navigate them delivered immediate and constantly increasing benefits within one’s own ‘portal’ and all those which naturally connected and overlapped?
