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September 30, 2004

Inventor of World Wide Web Proposes Cooperation

I know everyone was thinking of Al Gore, but this isn't a political post.

RedNova.com has an article about Tim Berners-Lee's vision for the future.  If there's anyone to notice, it's him (inventor of the World Wide Web).  He has an interesting take on how to improve the Internet.  He proposes a cooperative effort to develop standards for searching.  He states:

Rather than merely navigating their way via Web links to information related to their interests, Web surfers should be able to manipulate it to intelligently steer them to data with specific meaning to that person

He hopes for mediums that will not only find data for users, but point them to information they will likely seek next.

Mr. Lee is perhaps one of the best innovators of the modern world, yet he passes up huge potential profits (see previous PHOSITA post).  In fact, he states that his new ideas should follow the same path, and "the industry must avoid the temptation to lock up key technologies by demanding royalty payments."

I know I've wished for more advanced searching ability for a while.  I know that LexisNexis and Westlaw both have search capabilities that exceed those on the Web, but the databases of information is limited to legal material.  It would be great to search the whole Web for a word that is within the same sentence (or paragraph, or a certain number of words) as another.  I have confidence that this is not a far-fetched futuristic dream.

Won't we all feel old when we're telling the next generation about the "old-fashioned" searches we used to do?  Of course, I remember when our family got our first computer . . .

10-4-04 Update: The Mercury News also has an article on the issue.

Posted by at 02:51 PM.
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