Newsgroups: comp.archives.admin Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ox.com!caen!sdd.hp.com!think.com!linus!linus!linus!mbunix!eachus From: eachus@largo.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) Subject: Re: building an interstate (data) highway with no roadmaps In-Reply-To: worley@compass.com's message of 18 Jun 91 13:49:57 GMT Message-ID: Sender: news@linus.mitre.org (News Service) Nntp-Posting-Host: largo.mitre.org Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA. References: <9106171612.AA01441@mazatzal.merit.edu> Date: 18 Jun 91 16:47:09 I was at a Hypertext meeting a year or so ago, and after listening to all the talks, I commented to a friend: "You know, we had librarians for thousands of years before the invention of movable type made them necessary. In Hypertext, everyone is trying to do it the other way round." What I see on the net makes the Hypertext people sound like forward thinkers. The net is even more chaotic than the (often static) environments that have been used in Hypertext prototypes. In the Hypertext arena the problem is that they are developing the tools without considering how the necessary databases will be created. On the net, we have much more data than anyone can comprehend, but no support for even developing the tools. What the world and the net need is a new type of organization which is a software library. Given funding, such an institution could provide disk space (cheap), net access (not so cheap, but arguably billable to actual users, software developers to provide the necessary tools (no big deal), and actual software LIBRARIANS to develop a cataloging system and actually organize all this stuff. That will be by far the bigest expense. There is as yet no Dewey Decimal system for software, but we desparately need it. Incidently, all the fancy software in the world with multiple keys, multiple views, etc. won't address that need. What make the Dewey system (or Library of Congress) useful is that once I have it in my head, I know where books on say Cryptography are to be found, and I can find related books that I didn't know about. A keyword probe will miss closely related--but different--subjects. -- Robert I. Eachus with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...