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| Yao Ziyuan 2... |
 Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 4:21 am |
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Excerpt from http://sites.google.com/site/yaoziyuan/publications/four-connectivities-of-the-information-age
Four Connectivities of the Information Age
While Google and Wikipedia serve as the steam engine of today, the
full potential of this Information Age is yet to unfold. I envision a
future civilization characterized by four pillars that will make the
world work as a single mind.
I. Data connectivity
As long as we have a person's email address or a resource's address
(such as a website's URL), we can approach this person or resource.
Such a capability is dubbed "data connectivity" in this article. Data
connectivity is omnipresent, with the exception that it is still
restricted in certain countries and regions, where efforts are
committed on all levels to mitigate the interferences.
II. Language connectivity
Data connectivity alone is not enough. If we can't decode a foreign
language, we're unable to access valuable information and
opportunities available in this language. How to technically break the
language barrier is a major question for computer scientists and
linguists. The problem can be further divided into two subproblems:
(1) Can people learn a foreign language more efficiently and
effortlessly? Automatic code-switching (ACS), among other ideas
collected in Work: Ideas, will provably be the answer to this
question. (2) Can people read and write information in a foreign
language without actually learning that language? The writing part can
be realized by using a so-called formal language, while the reading
part also has plausible solutions in Work: Ideas.
III. Idea connectivity
The famous Babel Tower story tells that God split the humankind's
single language into many and scattered them throughout the earth. In
fact, language is hardly the only thing that is diversified and
scattered around the world. Many a time I came up with a bright idea
and tried to search Google for prior statements of the same idea, only
to no avail; but eventually a person on the Net referred me to a prior
art, or I myself found one via much more diligent searches (i.e.
trying new keyword combinations and checking more search results). Why
couldn't I find a prior art with Google easily? Because the actual
prior art I wound up with was described in terms different from what I
tried, or the prior art was deeply buried in a search result far
beyond the first few results pages.
Keyword-based information retrieval systems like Google isn't ideal
for pinpointing a unique idea written in a particular combination of
terms out of a million alternative keyword combinations. More
mundanely, if I see an unfamiliar error message on my computer screen,
I have a very good chance finding a solution by searching Google with
that error message as the exact search phrase. Otherwise, if my
problem doesn't have a uniquely identifiable keyword combination or
key phrase, and it's not widely discussed on the Web, a search engine
really can't do much.
All this is essentially because an "idea" (or "thought", "meaning",
"situation", "concern", or whatever you call it), unlike an error
message, is something that doesn't have a single, unique and fixed
form. It can take a million possible forms. Even an idea as simple as
"I eat rice" can take an unpredictable form such as "rice goes down
into my stomach." So, does it mean we really can't take control of the
storage and retrieval of "ideas"? No. We all have the experience of
locating something we're looking for in a book by following the
guidance of its "table of contents", which could have never been done
by searching with a blindly guessed keyword combination. Indeed,
"table of contents" (a tree where each node guides you to more
specific topics) and its more general variant, "cross reference" (a
network where each vertex guides you to related, not just more
specific, topics), can harness a human's own brainpower to effectively
serve his "idea management and retrieval" needs.
We can imagine that a website is like a book, and its navigation menu
or sitemap serves as its "table of contents", while the Internet is
like a library which is a collection of many individual
"books" (websites). Although there are "library catalogs" like Yahoo
Directory and DMOZ Directory, such directories only classify websites
into subject categories just like library catalogs only classify books
into subject categories; they cannot tell you which particular books
contain a particular idea or address a particular problem (an idea/
problem that is far more specific than the most specific subject
category that a library catalog has to offer), and they cannot merge
multiple books on similar topics into a single, well-organized
reference -- you have to go through every one of them to discover each
one's unique merits. How wonderful would life be if there is only a
single book? If the Internet is not a set of many "books" (websites)
scattered all over the place but a single "book"? And this single big
book has a table of contents that can direct us all the way down to
any particular concern? Fortunately, there is such a thing and its
name is Wikipedia. Wikipedia has categorization and cross reference
for topics as specific as conceivable, and no two pages are dedicated
to exactly the same topic. So, Wikipedia is idea connectivity!
Another useful property of Wikipedia is that each Wikipedia article or
category can serve as a unique address, or "coordinates", for the
topic (or concept, idea, whatever) it corresponds to. With this
property, we can enable people with the same interest to rendezvous at
the same Wikipedia page and therefore talk with each other. People
could also register resources at a Wikipedia page's External Links
section so that other people with the same interest can find them.
People could even "subscribe" to a Wikipedia page for new and updated
resources and opportunities on that topic.
IV. Intelligence connectivity
Now that we have Wikipedia as our idea organizer, merging great minds
of all times and countries into a "common memory", and eliminating
information retrieval inconveniences inherent in keyword-based search
engines. Yet it is a memory and only a memory, not equipped with
intelligence that can creatively solve new problems. That is to say,
Wikipedia is a Mr. Know-All that can answer any question directly
answerable by existing human knowledge, but it can't solve an open
problem that requires a combination of several existing strategies and
knowledge points. It can teach you existing knowledge in geometry but
can't prove/disprove a geometry conjecture.
We already have Wikipedia as "the memory" and we also want "the CPU",
namely, artificial intelligence. Of course, full-automatic general-
purpose AI is hard to engineer, but computer-assisted problem solving
can be a first step. For example, if we're solving a math problem, we
choose a seemingly promising strategy from our "strategy bases" in our
minds, according to the problem's main type and characteristic
conditions. Such a "strategy base" is exactly something that the
computer can do for us, using the same "idea retrieval" mechanism
discussed in "idea connectivity", only with the difference that this
time it also does "strategy retrieval", where a "strategy" is a
special kind of "idea" that caters to certain problem characteristics
and provides certain problem-solving frameworks. So, the computer
suggests the human relevant strategies and knowledge based on problem
types and characteristics selected by the human in the strategy base's
"table of contents", while the human can better focus on evaluating
and applying strategies.
Plus! Active connectivities
We discussed above four pillars that can connect people to data,
language, ideas and solutions, and based upon that, we can further
explore the "active version" of each connectivity:
* Active data connectivity doesn't wait for the human to retrieve
the data but actively pushes the data to him, an example being the
"Blackberry."
* Active language connectivity doesn't wait for the human to learn
a language but actively introduces elements of that language into his
incoming/outgoing information.
* Active idea connectivity doesn't wait for the human to find an
idea but actively suggests him relevant ideas for his current tasks/
interests.
* Active intelligence connectivity doesn't wait for the human to
encounter a problem but actively discovers potential problems that can
be interesting research opportunities for him. |
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