"Inspired by a system for categorising books proposed by an Indian librarian more than 50 years ago, a team of EU-funded researchers have developed a new kind of internet search that takes into account factors such as opinion, bias, context, time and location. The new technology, which could soon be in use commercially, can display trends in public opinion about a topic, company or person over time -- and it can even be used to predict the future. (...) A pioneering combination of modern science and a decades-old classification method, brought together by European researchers in the LivingKnowledge project. Supported by EUR 4.8 million in funding from the European Commission, the LivingKnowledge team, coordinated by Prof. Giunchiglia, adopted a multidisciplinary approach to developing new search technology, drawing on fields as diverse as computer science, social science, semiotics and library science. (...) We were able to turn Ranganathan's pseudo-algorithm into a computer algorithm and the computer scientists were able to use it to mine data from the web, extract its meaning and context, assign facets to it, and use these to structure the information based on the dimensions of diversity. (...)" - Amira

"Researchers at the University of Pavia in Italy, another partner, drew on their expertise in extracting meaning from web content -- not just from text and multimedia content, but also from the way the information is structured and laid out -- in order to infer bias and opinions, adding another facet to the data. 'We are able to identify the bias of authors on a certain subject and whether their opinions are positive or negative,' the LivingKnowledge coordinator says. 'Facts are facts, but any information about an event, or on any subject, is often surrounded by opinions and bias.' (...) More immediately, this application scenario provides functionality for detecting trends even before these trends become apparent in daily events -- based on integrated search and navigation capabilities for finding diverse, multi-dimensional information depending on content, bias and time,' (...) 'The future will be all about big data -- we can't say whether it will be good or bad, but it will certainly be different.'" - Amira

Facts are facts? lol - Meg VMeg