http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5153627.html
Guy Gilpatrick characterized the effect of the extraordinary on one's imagination by saying "it not only staggered, but also reeled, tripped, and fell face-down into the gutter". That's somewhat the appropriate reaction to IBM's WebFountain initiative, a supercomputing project which intends to push current Web searching into data-mining services delivering meaning and content.
A number of competitors are also pursuing the same goal, which in some sense is the inverse of the 'semantic Web' concepts discussed previously in this blog. This article describes the roots of this project, along with the hardware, software, and personnel resources required to support it, and gives a glimpse of potential applications.
I have tin-drummed the concept that those companies which can make effective use of the plethora (if not surfiet) of information on the InterNet can get an immense leg-up on their competitors. IBM seeks to make this a service operation which could, prehaps, actually level this playing field even as it was being sodded and marked.
A number of related stories are covered in links within the indexed article, and another balanced evaluation of this system and its implications can be found here:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jan04/0104comp1.html
Posted by jho at February 6, 2004 11:38 AM