Re: Billed-as Ultimate Search Engine...

Sorry Woodcock, but I haven't read the article though it does sound interesting. However, coming back down to reality I would have to call bulls**t on this software. Three areas of research you may want to look into that are related are data mining, AI, and most importantly "Web Farming". All technologies that support these concepts fall way short of initial promises.

Web Farming is a 5+ year old term that sounds very similar to what you are identifying. Although the idea of Web Farming and the Autonomy Systems software seems really *neat* it just ain't feasible in a major real-world application.

Another major acedemic area you should look into to hack down what is touted about this technology is Knowledge Systems (more broadly Knowledge Management).

Sorry about being slim on details but I don't know enough about any of these topics to put up a good argument. I do think these topics would be of interest to you as they are related.

-Sean

In article <8e8v3p$k4f$1_at_mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>,   Woodcock <EVSmalley_at_blackthespam.earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
> I think I may need a reality check on this. Anyone?
>
> Wired mag, 2/00 "The Quest for Meaning": This article pretty much
> convinced me that a piece of software I've never heard of is going to end
> up running the world 5 years from now, which, when I take a step back,
> seems unlikely.
>
> Did anyone else read this, or has anybody used this Autonomy Systems
> software? The gist of the story is that the real currency of the Internet
> and the Internet Age is so-called "unstructured data", which just means
> text in various formats on various topics. But the problem is that even
> though this text is what humans want and need from the Internet,
> computers don't really know what to do with it, and we have to tell them,
> which defeats the purpose of the whole thing. Computers are good with
> numbers and formalized programming languages, but they don't know how to
> read a magazine article and know whether you'll like it.
>
> And so now according to the article the company Autonomy has changed all
> that, by using a hundreds of years old algorithm to give the skills of,
> quote "comprehending context, generalizing from words to an idea, even
> understanding the unspoken by grasping the root concepts beneath the play
> of syntax." And so supposedly the software can read anything in any
> language (without actually knowing what the words mean) and link
> paragraphs in one document with most closely related documents from its
> source (which could The Web, or The Company's Complete Knowledge Record).
> And the implication is that this all works well enough that it can take
> the place of human beans doing the same work.
>
> The article suggest that these people are the only ones with a product
> that can do this and it quotes the CEO saying they're on the way to
> becoming "the Oracle of unstructured information." Meaning, they'll be
> everywhere.
>
> If somebody could point out the flaws, catches, and exaggerations so that
> I can go back to my normal life, that'd be great.
>
> Edward
>

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