Date: Tuesday 12th February 2002
Time 6.30 pm
Venue: The Sekforde Arms, Sekforde Street, Clerkenwell, London. Nearest
Underground Station - Farringdon.
Speaker: Allan Gilchrist, Senior Associate Consultant, TFPL Ltd.
Topic: What to do next?
"What to do next? There are too many books, too many plays, too
much commentary and clatter. There is only progress and frenzy. There is
too much decay of the heart"
John Osborne's diary entry of 25 years ago has an uncanny echo today as we
look at the Internet. The whole baggage of information retrieval -
techniques and performance management - has entered a new and radical
period of change. We have moved from information systems designed largely
for scientists by scientists and operated by scientists to the world of
the Internet and intranet; from punched cards, via batch processing
mainframes to the ubiquitous PC; from classification schemes built by
philosophers to search engines designed by mathematicians; from attempted
objectivity of the Cranfield experiments to TREC and a growing feeling
that we are not cooping with either information retrieval or performance
measurement. Automation is not yet the answer, intellectual human labour
is expensive and information throughputs are vast. What to do next?
This is a question Alan Gilchrist is well qualified to explore at the
penultimate meeting of the IIS Southern Branch.
The meeting is free and open to all with a professional interest in the
topic. There will be a free buffet afterwords. If you plan to attend
please let Phillip Powell know at [log in to unmask] or on 07989 402534.
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