Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!udel!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!ucbvax!OZ.AI.MIT.EDU!Wayne From: Wayne@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Filtering A Global Hypermedia Network Message-ID: Date: Fri, 20-Nov-87 05:44:00 EST Article-I.D.: MIT-OZ.MDCG.WAYNE.12352080507.BABYL Posted: Fri Nov 20 05:44:00 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 22-Nov-87 10:07:41 EST Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 30 > Date: Thu, 19 Nov 87 09:14:57 est > From: madd@bucsf.bu.edu (Jim Frost) > > Anyway, the cross-reference ended up being about the size of the > encyclopaedia but made it possible to find even obscure references in > only seconds WITHOUT A GLOBAL SEARCH.... The power of the indexing system for the Grolier CD-ROM lies precisely in the fact that IS based on a global analysis of the total text. An intelligent agent (no doubt a few people armed with computers and the appropriate software) scanned the entire text for conceptual links. Any users of the Grolier CD-ROM are taking advantage of an indexing scheme built on this global preprocessing. You don't have to conduct a global search, because someone has already done it for you, although no doubt your or my personal global analysis would turn up radically different links than did Grolier's editors. ISI's citation indexes, which cover the majority of the world scientific literature, are also based on a global scan, in this case of millions of documents. It is impossible to predict what journal in what domain will refer to a given document, and so it is necessary to analyze (nearly) all the scientific journals in the world to uncover citation links. Never underestimate the necessity for or power of global analysis. Any local structure is only as robust as its knowledge of the entire world. Presumably a global hypermedia advisor would be very robust indeed. Wayne