Odyssey Online

…this in the current issue of Nature, an article on Watson, the computer that recently did so well on the game show Jeopardy. The thesis is essentially that Watson could be a prototype for the next leap in search engines, namely, engines that are able to finally actualize natural language searching.  That is, computers you’d converse with and be doing so search databases.

…this from the Boston Phoenix around Christmas, a convincing and frightening piece about how federal, state, and local governments are “drowning in data.” From the article, “Even with millions being spent on storage solutions, public workers warn that at the bottleneck of information flow sits a good old-fashioned shortage of manpower.”

…with the news this morning out of Cairo turning ominous, this from the Library At Alexandria.  A “know hope” moment, but with today’s violence one wonders what will happen…

…here’s a short list of newer titles in ODY on contemporary Egypt. While of course none of these titles can take into account the events of the last week, they may provide useful background on how things have unfolded.

• Reengaging Egypt : Options for US-Egypt Economic Relations by Barbara Kotschwar
• Islamists and Secularists in Egypt : Opposition, Conflict, and Cooperation by Dina Shehata
• Egypt : A Short History by Robert L. Tignor
• The Mubarak Leadership and Future of Democracy in Egypt by Alaa Al-Din Arafat
• Inside Egypt : the Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution by John R. Bradley
• Egypt after Mubarak : Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World by Bruce K. Rutherford