Kingsley Idehen wrote (in response to David Eddy): (01)
[DE]
Three questions to ask everyone on staff: (02)
- have you ever lost/not been able to find when needed a file or folder? (03)
- how much training do you have as a catalog librarian? (04)
- how would you like to stand up in front of your peers & explain your
folder/file system? (05)
Just because people are dimly aware folder/files are important doesn't mean
they do a good job of managing them. (06)
[KI]
All of these problems are handled by incorporating the architecture of the
World Wide Web into File and Data Management. Please note, my comment in no way
implies World Wide Web access to said artifacts. I am simply expressing the
fact that making Files and Data web-like (or webby) is a critical part of the
solution. (07)
[EB]
The architecture in question seems to be the "data management" idea of creating
indexes to the files, which is the Google method of dealing with the Web, and
not accidentally, the approach used by the Google and Microsoft local search
helpers for my file system. It is not clear to me that any "webby" idea in the
W3C sense is relevant. The Semantic Web idea was that you take the time to
mark up the data set with fancy key words, which improves the relevance of the
search results over the approach of indexing pages, files, documents by
statistical use of words and wording patterns. Then you have a language in
which you can say things about the relationships of the keywords that can
further improve the search. All of this depends on people doing the markup and
saying the useful things about relationships, which most are too lazy to do or
don't know how to do. That human factor (that the indexed statistical search
does not depend on) is the difference in their success rates. (08)
The LOD idea is the HTML idea of intentional links. I know this is related to
that, and I put the reference in the text/data (or maybe in some attached
metadata object that has to be constructed with a tool, a la Sem Web). And
instead of the 14 standard bibliographic citation forms, we have one scheme
that software can implement directly, and oh yeah, can make indexes for. The
idea of formal citations goes back to the 19th (if not 18th) century, and
catalog indexes by keywords attached to the documents (by somebody) has been a
staple of library science since the turn of the 20th century. And I suspect
that the idea of authors supplying the keywords (the index basis) as well as
the citations (the intentional links) showed up when the volume of printed
material exceeded the capabilities of the librarians whose job was to scan the
work and create the keywords (like Google). LOD depends on authors putting in
the links, or subsequent librarians building the metadata. (09)
So, as Kingsley has repeatedly pointed out, the real Web technologies are
indeed automating proven techniques. But let us not get confused as to which
ones best serve which purposes, given that humans and their behavior patterns
will be involved. There are three basic Webby ideas: knowledge-assisted (or
nearly blind) statistical indexing, explicit links, and explicit metadata.
File systems offer a fourth -- hierarchical collections. Each has its value. (010)
To go back to the base of this thread, the real reason why we have brittle
systems is two-fold:
- the limitations of current tools and their accessibility to the people who
have to do the job, and
- a lack of clairvoyance as to future requirements, which is only sometimes
just short-sightedness.
In 50 years of IT, every new technology just moves the problem. But along the
way, what the tools can do for us NOW has improved greatly. New technologies
are successful if they are both useful and accessible, or useful and work with
negligible human interaction. A technology can only be more or less brittle
with respect to ANTICIPATED change. "Disruptive technologies" are rare.
"Disruptive events" are unfortunately fairly common. Like the poor, silos and
legacies you will have with you always. (011)
-Ed (012)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Work: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Mobile: +1 240-672-5800 (013)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (014)
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