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  • MALE SPEAKER: This is my attempt to increase the

  • sartorial quotient of Google, and it hasn't worked at all.

  • On the other hand--

  • well, I noticed you have a coat on, that's true.

  • Greg Chesson gets two points for showing up with a coat.

  • It's a real pleasure to introduce Bruce Schatz to you.

  • I've known Bruce for rather a long time.

  • My first introduction to him came as we both began getting

  • excited about digital libraries and the possibility

  • of accumulating enormous amounts of information in

  • digital form that could be worked on, manipulated by,

  • processed through software that we hope would augment our

  • brain power.

  • So Bruce has been in the information game for longer

  • than he's actually willing to admit I suspect.

  • He's currently at the University of Illinois,

  • Champaign-Urbana.

  • As you will remember, that's also the area where the

  • National Center for Supercomputer

  • Applications is located.

  • Bruce was around at the time when Mark and Jason was doing

  • work on the first browsers, the mosaic versions of the

  • browsers derived from Tim BernersLee's work.

  • Actually, the one thing that Bruce may not realize he gets

  • credit for is teaching me how to pronounce

  • caenorhabditis elegans.

  • I looked at it before and I couldn't figure out, and maybe

  • I didn't even say it right this time.

  • But this is a tiny little worm that consists of 50 cells.

  • It was the first living organism that we actually

  • completely sequenced the genome for.

  • Then we got interested in understanding how does the

  • genome actually reflect itself as this little worm develops

  • from a single fertilized cell.

  • So Bruce introduced me to the idea of collecting everything

  • that was known about that particular organism, and to

  • turn it into a database that one could manipulate and use

  • in order to carry out research.

  • Well, let me just explain a little bit more about his

  • background and then turn this over to him, because you're

  • here not to listen to his bio, but to listen to

  • what he has to say.

  • He's currently director of something called CANIS--

  • C-A-N-I-S. I thought it had to do with dogs

  • until I re-read it.

  • It says Community Architecture is for Network Information

  • Systems.

  • BRUCE SCHATZ: That's why they let me in the building.

  • MALE SPEAKER: I'm sorry.

  • BRUCE SCHATZ: That's why they let me in the building.

  • MALE SPEAKER: Because along with the other

  • canines that are here.

  • It's at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana,

  • and he's been working on federated all the world's

  • knowledge, just like we are, by building pioneer research

  • systems in industrial and academic settings.

  • He's really done a lot of work over a period of 25 or 30

  • years in this domain.

  • The title of the talk uses the term telesophy, which he

  • introduced as a project at Belcorp in the 1980s.

  • Later on, he worked at UIUC on something called DeLIver

  • D-E-L-I-V-E-R, and now more recently on semantics.

  • That's the reason that I asked him to come here.

  • He's working on something called BeeSpace, which is

  • spelled B-E-E, as in the little buzzing organism.

  • This is an attempt as I understand it, but I'm going

  • to learn more, an attempt to take a concept space and

  • organize it in such a way that we can assist people thinking

  • through and understanding more deeply what we know about that

  • particular organism.

  • So this is a deep dive into a semantic problem.

  • So I'm not going to bore you with any more biographical

  • material, except to say that Bruce has about nine million

  • slides to go through, so please set your modems at 50

  • gigabits per second because he's going to have to go that

  • fast to get through all of it.

  • I've asked him to leave some time at the end for questions.

  • I already have one queued up.

  • So Bruce, with that rather quick introduction, let me

  • thank you for coming out to join us at Google and turn

  • this over to you to teach us about semantics.

  • BRUCE SCHATZ: Thank you.

  • I have one here, so you can just turn yours off.

  • Thank you.

  • I was asked to give a talk about semantics, which I

  • supposedly know something about.

  • So this is going to be both a talk that's broad and deep at

  • the same time, and it's going to try to do something big and

  • grand, and also try to do something deep that you can

  • take away with it.

  • So that may mean that it fails completely and does none of

  • those, or maybe it does all of those.

  • I've actually been giving this talk for 25 years and--

  • now, of course, it doesn't work.

  • Am I not pointing it in the right place?

  • I'm pushing it but it's not going.

  • Oh, there it goes.

  • OK, sorry.

  • Can you flip it back there?

  • Sorry about that.

  • Small technical difficulty, but the man behind the curtain

  • is fixing it.

  • So I gave this talk first more than 20 years ago in the hot

  • Silicon Valley research lab that all the grad students

  • wanted to go to, which was called Xerox PARC.

  • I think a few people actually have heard of Xerox PARC.

  • It sort of still exists now.

  • We went down completely?

  • There we go.

  • Thank you very much.

  • I was pushing this idea that you could federate and search

  • through all the world's knowledge, and the uniform

  • reaction that was, boy, that would be great,

  • but it's not possible.

  • And I said, no, you're wrong.

  • Here, I'll show you a system that searches across multiple

  • sources and goes across networks, and does pictures

  • and text and follows links, and I'll explain each piece

  • about how it works.

  • Then they said, that's great, but not in our lifetime.

  • Well, 10 years later was mosaic and the web.

  • And 20 years later I'm delighted to be here, and all

  • of you have actually done it.

  • You've done all the world's knowledge to some degree.

  • What I want to talk about is how far are you and what you

  • need to do before you take over the rest of the world and

  • I die, which is another 20 years.

  • So what's going to happen in the next 20 years.

  • The main thing I'm going to say is a lot's happened on

  • tele, but not too much on sophy.

  • So you're halfway to the hive mine, and since I'm working on

  • honey bees, at the end you will see a picture of honey

  • bees and hear something about hive mines, but it will be

  • very short.

  • Basically, if you look at Google's mission, the mission

  • is doing a lot about access and organization of all the

  • world's knowledge.

  • Actually, to a degree that's possible, you do an excellent

  • job about that.

  • However, you do almost nothing about the next stages, which

  • are usually called analysis and synthesis.

  • Solving actual problems, looking at things in different

  • places, combining stuff and sharing it.

  • And that's because if you look at the graph of research over

  • the years, we're sort of here, and you're doing commercially

  • what was done in the research area about 10 years ago, but

  • you're not doing this stuff yet.

  • So the telesophy system was about here.

  • Mosaic was about to here.

  • Those are the things that

  • searching across many sources--

  • like what I showed, we're really working pretty well in

  • research labs with 1,000 people.

  • They weren't working with 100 million.

  • But if Google's going to survive 10 more years, you're

  • going to have to do whatever research systems do here.

  • So pay attention.

  • This doesn't work with students.

  • With students I have to say I'm going to

  • fail you at the end.

  • But you have a real reason, a monetary reason, and a moral

  • reason to actually pay attention.

  • So back to the outline.

  • I'm going to talk about what are different ways to think

  • about doing all the world's knowledge, and how to go

  • through all the levels.

  • I'm going to do all the levels and sort of say you are here,

  • and then I'm going to concentrate on the next set of

  • things that you haven't quite got to.

  • The two particular things I'm going to talk about our

  • scalable semantics and concept navigation, which probably

  • don't mean anything to you now, but if I do my job right,

  • 45 minutes, actually now 10 of them are up,