Re: Indexing the List of Lists

Alan Emtage ([email protected])
Fri, 25 Mar 1994 16:40:55 --100


Hi Rob,

> Alan Emtage writes regarding Lists of Lists:
> >... I don't believe that manual maintenance of this kind of data
> >is feasible any longer.... the Internet is now too big for this kind of
> >thing.
> I strongly suggest that a first step in any effort of this kind must be
> the definition of exactly what we are trying to collect information on
> because the issues of indexing vs. the generation of a 'table of
> contents' are very different indeed.

[...as you can see I'm a little behind on my mail...]

Perhaps some clarification of what I said may show that we're in
agreement. Some people have taken what I wrote to mean that computers
would _catalog_ the data rather I meant that computers should gather and
index the data and at at that point humans can then come in and further
refine it into information (there being a difference between "data" and
"information"). The inital cataloging step will have to be done by humans
for the foreseeable future. I agree that the scattershot approach is
going to give us a lot of noise and little signal.

-- 
-Alan

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Alan Emtage, "The Left in Canada is more gauche Bunyip Information Systems, than sinister" Montreal, CANADA -The Economist

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