Number 195 - August 1999

Circle in a Spiral
by John Crow, June 1999 Sacra Blue
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel. Never ending nor beginning, on an ever-spinning reel. Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own, down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shown. This is often what it feels like, when you're searching on the Net. The Web it entangles as it dangles just ahead, something was it what you wanted or was it just within your head?     In 1969, Dusty Springfield sang these words in the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" in the movie A Thomas Crown Affair. Alan and Marilyn Bergman, who wrote the lyrics, had no way of knowing how prophetic their words would become. They were able to describe very accurately how many computer users feel when attempting to find information on the Internet.     Many people just turn on their computers to write a letter to a friend, print it out, and then put it in an envelope with a 32- (or is it 35?) cent stamp and drop it in the mailbox on the corner. Thousands of dollars in high-tech equipment and software for what? A typewriter that can, for the most part, check your spelling. Add to this hours and hours of frustration from trying to find features that they know should be just a click or two away. Is it any wonder that so many people just surrender to the confusion and turn their computers off?     Wouldn't it be great if someone could come up with a simple system that everyone could use to catalogue Web sites-and even the information inside the sites? How about a system that everyone from grade-school children to advanced college Ph.D.s could understand? Something that would use concepts and would not be subject to variations in spelling or even differences in languages. Something that, even if you didn't know exactly what you were looking for, could at least point you toward the proper starting place. Something that would not depend upon a natural language or Boolean phrases and yet could be used by all search engines. A	system that would allow parents to view Nudes on a Picnic from the Louvre and still exclude their children from viewing nudes on a picnic from Playboy or Penthouse.     It would also need to be something that would be of benefit to those who make a living from the Internet. These people already know that if no one can find them, they don't/won't/can't make any money, so an easy system would be very important to them. In short, an easy system would make everyone happy and make everyone want to use it.     What would such a system cost? Now that's the problem-cost. How about free? Yes, free! Clearly, no one that could come up with such a system would really let it go for free. They would have to be crazy, mad even.     Surprisingly, a system like this already exists. In fact, it exists in almost every town and every city in the entire world, and you are already familiar with it. It is the Dewey Decimal Classification System. In this system, everything would be classified by number. For example, the 500 through 599 series would be the Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the 600s would contain the applied sciences, engineering, medical sciences, and so on. The 700s would be the arts, music, and related subjects.     But, you say, there are too many sites, too many pages, no one to do the work. Wrong! Every site has a Webmaster and every page has an author. Thousands of trained people, trained librarians, can help those who need it to correctly classify their sites or pages. For those who might be collectors of eclectic stuff, their sites could have multiple classifications so everyone could find all their neat stuff. Alternatively, those who want their privacy do not have to classify their pages at all.     The Dewey Decimal System is clearly a viable classification system for the Web. Like Dusty Springfield sang in the song, "As the images unwind, Like the circles that you find, In the windmills of your mind."
Number 195 - August 1999