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Subject:Re: What's the point, indeed! From:Dave Walker <walker -at- RANKIN -dot- ASPENTEC -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 15 Sep 1993 08:07:16 EST
In article <199309142118 -dot- AA28912 -at- mtu -dot- edu>, rselfe -at- mtu -dot- edu writes:
>Just a thought:
>Will large databases of documents, data, images, . . . that can be searched
>with the help of "intellegent" engines take care of some of this
>information flow problem? Is anyone out there working on hypertext systems
>that will allow for this sort of activity?
There is work going on in this area.
Check out any good multimedia encyclopedia or Microsoft's Multimedia Viewer
if you get a chance. While the current generation of search engines
(Boolean searches that a user sets up) is slightly more useful than
the previous (searching on keywords), or the first (a good old full text
search), researchers are developing ways to do more intelligent searches,
involving (among other things) synonyms, and document structure recognition.
I'm not sure if this will help the information flow problem, because as
Gretchen pointed out, people learn (or are predisposed to learn)
in different ways.
>There was one such virtual librarian in a book called _Snow Crash_ that I
>liked as a model. It's late in the day; I'm starting to free associate.
Did it involve avalanches?
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