Ohio IT Skills Blog

Mining the Deep Web: Search strategies that work

Link: Mining the Deep Web: Search strategies that work.

Back in the days when libraries had card catalogs - we used the system, but weren't necessarily comfortable with it.  Certainly we never referred to going to search for something as "carding." 

But the Web has made the search for information a common part of everyday life - and every day millions and millions of people "googling" a part of their Internet experience.  Google has a powerful system to be sure - but it is too easy to mistake "googling" for an exhaustive search for the right information.  And many times Google simply does not suffice.  There are - believe it or not - a wide range of resources that are not indexed (or indexed most effectively) by Google.  These resources require other tools and variations on the techniques.

Information literacy is a key survival skill in today's world of work and learning - check out this article and explore the subject on your own - to see what tools can keep you more informed and give you the true information access that will enable you to succeed in your chosen occupation.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

Columbus "geeks" use their skills to help others

Link: Columbus "geeks" use their skills to help others.

Help is available all around us - the knowledge "haves" are always looking for ways to share with "have-nots."  In Columbus OH, Ohio State University faculty member Bettina Bair describes ways in which women in computer science are reaching out to the community, helping people find their way around the technology and through the Internet and other applications.  Kudos to Ms. Bair and her volunteers!

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

As We May Think - Vannevar Bush

Link: As We May Think.

There are a few documents in the IT business that were seminal in the creation and evolution of the field.  Alan Turing's work, John von Neumann's work, the classic paper by Claude Shannon defining the "bit" as a unit of information - these are all key.  And the beauty of the Web is that these documents can be available again, to  enjoy and to  learn from.  "As We May Think" was written by  the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (established in 1941 by FDR), in 1945, published in the magazine's July issue.  It still reads almost as fresh and current as it did 60 years ago.  Which can only mean - we still have a long way to go to meet this man's vision.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

NorTech opens Tech Futures Web site

Back in April, I had the privilege of attending a planning session hosted by Nortech - a Cleveland area consortium of organizations dedicated to building tech industry in the region - and conducted by the Global Business Network, a consulting firm whose founder invented - or at least have come near to perfecting - a set of scenario-based techniques that enable disparate people and perspectives to come together to visualize and and plan around a limited series of possible/probable futures.

They have now completed the processing of normalizing the work product of that meeting - and have created a Web site to publicize and carry on the work of the group.  It is an excellent example of disciplined dreaming for the purpose of planning.

There is also a blog for regular updating of the status of the work and the results of econoic development in the region - also well worth checking out.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

The Start of Computer Games

Link: The Start of Computer Games.

The current issue of MIT's Technology Review recalls the development of the very first computer-based game.  It was Spacewar in 1962.  These were the days when hooking up a CRT to a computer was a wild and crazy idea - computers communicated through paper tape of cards at this point.  Working with video was a very new medium, so the first versions used dots of light to represent good guys, bad guys, and ammunition.  Turns out this was also the first "first person shooter" game model, as well.  After completing the game, and deciding among the group to distribute it to other interested programmers (perhaps an early example of open source development also?), it landed in the hands of a young engineer in Utah named Nolan Bushnell, who ultimately create Pong, and then Atari, and then a number of ventures that changed the entertainment landscape.  Another of the pioneers in the early days at MIT was one Richard Greenblatt, who migrated from gaming and game theory to artificial intelligence (AI) and founded a groundbreaking company called Lisp Machine Inc. - LMI - that drove the development of AI concepts through the 1980's.

Why is all this nostalgia importantConfigure on this particular day?  It seems that recent history fades rapidly to a blur, as each successive event seems more important and more drastic than the one before.  Memory turns to shades of beige except for a few stand-out events here and there.  The revelation of Watergate's Deep Throat - along with recollections of the origins and chains of events like the creation of an entirely new genre such as electronic games - helps us put today's events in some context - and to remember that even though memory may trick us, each day has always been an exploration and a crisis, and we survived and improved along each step of the way.  And our prospects for a bright and productive tomorrow are just as good as ever.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is(!) Wikipedia

Link: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Certainly this is not the first time the connection has been made, but one cannot help but be impressed by the similarities between the concept of the Hitchhikers Guider as conceived by Douglas Adams, and the reality of the Wikipedia.  It's life mirroring fiction! But our deep metaphors don't stop thee.  Great thinkers have had the right idea all along.  Consider the concept of the collective consciousness, and collective unconsciousness as posited by Carl Jung.  Certainly anyone can see the resemblance of the Internet to Jung's concept.  As more and more people record their research, their thoughts, their energies within the great cloud of the Web, the sheer weight of all that thought cannot help but bring a presence to our conscious states.  We will be thinking not simply about the Web, but through the Web, in the future.  Perhaps we can detect a pattern.  The first wave of "sharing" - venting, ranting, what have you - has been comprised in great part of pornography, invective and venom.  Maybe, as we mature, the collective will begin to be weighted more toward positive energies, and our influence from it will be thus be more positive and constructive.

Fun to think about, in any case.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

Christie's - The Origins of Cyberspace - Auction

Link: Christie's - The Origins of Cyberspace: A Library on the History of Computing, Networking & Telecommunications.

If you are a student of how things got to be how they are - this may be an important opportunity for you to get hold of an actual piece of cyberspace history.  Christie's Auctions is holding an event called "The Origins of Cyberspace: A Library on the History of Computing, Networking & Telecommunications" - a sale from the collections of the Jeremy Norman & Co., dealers in antiquaria.  The collection is comprised of a wide variety of mostly paper documents.  Authors range from Babbage, Boole and Lady Lovelace, to Aiken, Turing,  Hopper, Shannon, Wiener, and Cerf.  If you don't know who these people are, you should be finding out.  And the online catalog of this auction would be a wonderful way to learn.  Each of the 255 lots (get it?  255 lots?) is describe in well-written, informed detail, and taken as a whole represents quite a course in the history of computing.  The most valuable lot - in Christie's projections - is the "business plan" written by Eckert and Mauchly to develop and sell a yet-to-be-invented line of general purpose computers.  Called "Outline of plans for development of electronic computers"  the document - created in early 1946 - was incredibly prescient of an industry no one yet dreamed of.  The sales estimate is between $50,000 - 70,000.  The auction is scheduled for tomorrow Wednesday, Feb 23.

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)

Predicitng the future for real

Link: RedNova News - Can This Black Box See Into the Future?.

This is just the kind of story that shows up in a week or two on Snopes as an urban legend with no basis in fact.  But - in the meantime - it is something to contemplate.  A "random event generator" - a type of calculator used regularly and for many years for a variety o scientific purposes - appears to be able to sense catastrophic events that are about to happen.  At least that seems to be the case twice (the 9/11 attack in NY, and the tsunami in Asia).  Is this the machine equivalent of animal instinct that senses impending diaster and causes animals to flee and seek shelter?  Predicting the future is one of those subtle obsessions in mankind.  We spend countless dollars trying to predict the weather, the stock market, our comfort in retirement, our financial health after a car accident, etc. etc.  But a machine that can detect world-shattering events beforte they occur - that's a little more science fiction than most can swallow.  It does offer the imagination an interesting thought, however.  If we tied together all the various means of predicting the future at our disposal - if we combined and organized those efforts - would we know any more about the future than we do now?  Is there a business in futures meta-prediction?

(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)