Tim:
At 10:14 16/7/96 -0400, you wrote:
>
>John Paul Fullerton stated the www is already like a data warehouse but I
>strongly disagree. The world wide web is like a mad monk's library. There
>is an awful lot of very interesting finds and useful knowledge available
>on the web, but finding that information is very difficult. There is no
>uniform reference guide or key to web. The very nature of a warehouse on
>the other hand is one of organization. Warehouses are designed to make
>life easier and allow work to be done more quickly.
Tools are on the way (into the unclass commercial market) that will ease
the undeniable "mad monk" effect of which you speak. Given the "physical
nature" of information, combined with the need only to copy it rather than
"pick and replenish" it, we really need only better search engines. At
least one formerly classified search engine created by a commercial firm
for Federal use is scheduled to go public. Originally called "information
refinery" (but scheduled to debut with a new name for the commercial
market), the unclass commercial search tool is a masterpiece of synthesis
of unclass sources. The inquirer first builds a configuration profile
(far more potent than a keyword search) and then launches the search
It has been know to answer questions like, "How many well heads are there
in China and how many of those are active?" The board of the parent
corporation was invited to demo the tool -- and a question was posed, "How
many [people of a certain wealth] are there, where are they, who are they,
and what are their relationships to one another?" The answers and
displays took sixteen seconds. As a few of those folks were on said
board, they volunteered to have further searches run on themselves.
Everyone was astonished at the information returned as they watched -- the
board approved the commercialization of the search engine. As for
validation of the above, I know the firm and have seen demo output but do
not wish to say more so as to leave the commercial launch matters to the
owners.
So hold into your competitive intelligence hats -- the replies to the
above questions were obtained only from unclass sources, on and off the
web. Yes, the tool will be initially expensive and the commercial use
terms have yet to be defined, but a successful product invites competitive
response, and less expensive tools will enter the market.
But once this tool is available in any form you can bank on the fact that
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Israeli, German and Russian entities,
among others, will be using it in an instant. For example, Japan's
commercial espionage against the US has been much more overt and led by a
combination of business and governmental organs not truly under the
control of traditional Intel. It has, nonetheless, been admirably
successful in technology forecasting and technology "food chain analysis"
to identify future needed bits of technologies and then buy, or buy into,
those firms -- this particular search engine would be a godsend to those
ongoing efforts. Most US firms have been inept by comparison.
Best regards, Gordon Housworth
Intellectual Capital Group
ghidra@modulor.com
Tel: 810-626-1310
--Gordon Housworth <ghidra@modulor.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>