Enabling Innovation in Internet Research
Evelyne Viegas
Microsoft Research
Has it become any easier or safer to find a needle in a haystack
in the information age?
The surface web consists of tens of billion pages in over 80 languages
and is growing rapidly. Beneath this lays a deep web of much greater
size. Complexity, size, and rate of expansion combine to make Web
searching a significant challenge. One in three mobile handset phones
will be a “smart phone” or Web-enabled device by 2009
in Western Europe. Cell phones are becoming India’s gateway
to the Internet. In Japan, mobile devices are the winners of information
exchange.
And yet, we are still today in the early stages of the digital information
age, with little understanding on how to find information which meets
the needs of the information seeker.
a. In need of a research platform for data access at internet scale
To meet the goal of perfecting our ability to find information on
the internet, going beyond document search, requires breakthroughs
in fundamental research that need to come from universities who are
our main drivers of fundamental research.
Fundamental research by universities is needed but some of that research
is not possible without access to assets that belong to corporations.
How to enable that research by making those assets available to researchers
constitutes today a major roadblock to breakthrough innovation in
internet research.
Industries cannot engage broadly with researchers on web research
on the creation of new technologies and experiences which could drastically
change the way we interact with the Web, because industries lack the
technologies and processes to provide access to sensitive user data
in a way which preserves its users’ privacies.
What is the range of technologies and processes needed to enable
industries to provide access to assets in a responsible manner vis-à-vis
its users while making sure valid research can be performed?
b. In need of a user-centric, context aware model of information
access
If we manage to solve the data access problem for researchers, potentially
others will benefit as well. For instance, if we can provide a model
of information access for researchers, can we extend it to a general
model of information access for any user? The ‘user’ now
participates as an ‘innovator’ and ‘maker of information,’
making the online world the primary place for information leaks due
to the lack of transparency in how to publish information safely,
adding to the already opaque existing privacy policies.
With a growing demand to have information being accessible by anyone,
from anywhere, at anytime, privately or socially, for individual,
community, research or legal purposes, it is time to move away from
prescriptive policies and towards information “enabling”
technologies and processes. Information needs are different: different
individuals may have different needs; the same person may have different
needs over time. In order to make the online world a safer yet innovative
place, we need to move towards a model of information access which
is human-centric and context-aware. What should such a model look
like?