In case you can't read it, I've transcribed it at the foot of this post.
I am particularly proud of the quote in the final paragraph.
Despite trying incredibly hard, all over the world, to get people excited about AI applied to search technology, few understood what we were pioneering in a tiny company called Tome Associates in London from 1986 until we ran out of money in 1991.
We started the company 3 years before Tim Berners Lee invented the worldwide web. We were also accredited as the first company in the world to launch an AI product known as Tome Searcher.
Ho hum. What might have been... sigh.
THE TIMES TUESDAY MARCH 8 1988
TECHNOLOGY
Growing too big for their own good
Cartoon by Smith
By Robert Matthews Technology Correspondent
Last week, London-based Tome Associates unveiled the result of four years' research into a problem that is becoming more pressing with each day that passes: information databases are just too big for their own good.
Since the late 1960s, a number of prescient professional organizations have been putting virtually every thing appearing virtually everywhere on to computer-compatible storage media, to give their members a comprehensive archive of infor- mation.
But it rapidly became apparent that the exponential growth of data being stored would quickly overwhelm conventional searching procedures. One database alone is currently adding references at the rate of over 30 an hour.
Anyone hoping to dig out the information they need from the millions of references needs help, from either human experts or computers.
The first tis in too short supply, and the computers have been, until now, "about as user-friendly as a cornered rat", to quote one expert.
The result, says Jeremy Horwood, commercial director of Tome Asso- ciates, is appalling under-use of a vast and valuable resource.
He cites the example of the Inspec technical information database, set up by the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1969. Its potential customer base is estimated to be well over the one million mark world wide, but so far it has attracted fewer than one-fiftieth that number.
Tome Searcher, the £500 computer software developed by Horwood's company in collaboration with sci- entists from London university, is aimed at boosting the use of databases in several ways.
First, it can accept instructions to carry out a search in ordinary English. This use of "natural language" programming obviates the need to memorise the many distinctly un- memorable commands needed to interrogate the databases.
Using an expert system approach, it also allows the best search strategies to be sorted out "off-line", before being hooked up to the database host computer.
As a result, Horwood argues, novice users can get the information they want as easily as if they were being helped by a human expert, and without being penalised for spending too long on-line narrowing down their searches.
Charges of £1 a minute, plus 50 pence per reference retrieved, are typical, so it pays to know what one is looking for, especially if using a foreign-based database.
But database providers should benefit from systems like Tome Searcher as well, because the simpler search techniques they offer should substantially boost the use to which the archives are put.
"The task now confronting the industry is one of education", says Horwood. "People must be made aware not only that these vast information sources are at hand, but also how they might benefit from using them...we must now convince potential users that they have questions".
TECHNOLOGY
Growing too big for their own good
Cartoon by Smith
By Robert Matthews Technology Correspondent
Last week, London-based Tome Associates unveiled the result of four years' research into a problem that is becoming more pressing with each day that passes: information databases are just too big for their own good.
Since the late 1960s, a number of prescient professional organizations have been putting virtually every thing appearing virtually everywhere on to computer-compatible storage media, to give their members a comprehensive archive of infor- mation.
But it rapidly became apparent that the exponential growth of data being stored would quickly overwhelm conventional searching procedures. One database alone is currently adding references at the rate of over 30 an hour.
Anyone hoping to dig out the information they need from the millions of references needs help, from either human experts or computers.
The first tis in too short supply, and the computers have been, until now, "about as user-friendly as a cornered rat", to quote one expert.
The result, says Jeremy Horwood, commercial director of Tome Asso- ciates, is appalling under-use of a vast and valuable resource.
He cites the example of the Inspec technical information database, set up by the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1969. Its potential customer base is estimated to be well over the one million mark world wide, but so far it has attracted fewer than one-fiftieth that number.
Tome Searcher, the £500 computer software developed by Horwood's company in collaboration with sci- entists from London university, is aimed at boosting the use of databases in several ways.
First, it can accept instructions to carry out a search in ordinary English. This use of "natural language" programming obviates the need to memorise the many distinctly un- memorable commands needed to interrogate the databases.
Using an expert system approach, it also allows the best search strategies to be sorted out "off-line", before being hooked up to the database host computer.
As a result, Horwood argues, novice users can get the information they want as easily as if they were being helped by a human expert, and without being penalised for spending too long on-line narrowing down their searches.
Charges of £1 a minute, plus 50 pence per reference retrieved, are typical, so it pays to know what one is looking for, especially if using a foreign-based database.
But database providers should benefit from systems like Tome Searcher as well, because the simpler search techniques they offer should substantially boost the use to which the archives are put.
"The task now confronting the industry is one of education", says Horwood. "People must be made aware not only that these vast information sources are at hand, but also how they might benefit from using them...we must now convince potential users that they have questions".
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