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From: eachus@largo.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: building an interstate (data) highway with no roadmaps
In-Reply-To: rhys@cs.uq.oz.au's message of 19 Jun 91 01:54:53 GMT
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	<EACHUS.91Jun18164709@largo.mitre.org> <2013@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
Date: 19 Jun 91 10:27:31


In article <2013@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> rhys@cs.uq.oz.au (Rhys Weatherley) writes:

 > I agree that something like this is needed, but how is it going to be
 > organised?  There's a big difference between books and computer programs...

   We're violently agreeing.  Anyone can do the repository bit, it is
organizing a software collection in a meaningful way that will be the
tough job.  Ed Vielmetti is trying to do one part of the job, but I am
saying that the real need is for the other $150 (or whatever) worth of
work on that Library of Congress card.

 > Maybe it's time we retrained programmers to write programs to perform
 > a single task, not control the world!  :-)

   We used to joke that every program in the MIT AI lab grew until it
could be used to read mail.  Now we know they don't stop there...

 > We'll come up with something eventually, but I don't think it will fit
 > into the library/archive framework we are used to: there's so much
 > more information in computing than humans are used to.  It will have
 > to be something new.  Any ideas?

   Some ideas, but this is in the class of very hard problems.  Even
if you have a database program which is designed only to be a fancy
phone dialer, it may implement an algorithm which is what I am looking
for for my radar application.  Or I may not want the program, but I am
looking for the Minneapolis telephone directory which is provided with
this program, and I'll also need the program so I can use it...

   It seems to me that we will need an indexing scheme that looks
hierarchical to the user, but which is actually implemented with fuzzy
logic.  When I go looking for a database program it would originally
exclude the phone dialer programs, but when I get to database programs
with data on addresses in Minnesota, the example I used above is now
back in.
--

					Robert I. Eachus

with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use  STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...
