The Internet is a thing of beauty that works precisely because it is uncontrolled and the sheer volume of information that is available. The Internet works because of four specific reasons: diversity, independence, decentralization and aggregation of information. The first three are obvious and will continue to expand beyond our imagination. Aggregation is the real problem with the Internet, and the question remains how you aggregate 90 billion sources of information. The Internet is meta data's greatest failure. We revel in the success of search engines such as Yahoo! and Google with their indexing millions of pages of distributed content. Yet, type in "meta data" and you get 10,900,000 hits which has grown from 2 million just three years ago. How many of those sites actually provide a solid foundation of meta data? Type in "enterprise meta data" and you drop just below a million hits. Again, how many of these links are you going to follow? Better yet, what about the other 70 billion pages not indexed by the search engines? (It is estimated that only 10 percent of pages are indexed). What about the semantic Web?
"The semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which integrates a variety of applications using XML for syntax and URIs for naming. "
"The semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." - Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web, Scientific American, May 2001
The semantic Web would really be nice, except for a few small problems. First, how do you get the cow back in the barn? Are any of the 90 billion pages currently in existence going to convert to XML, RDF and other semantic technologies? And, are those people that wouldn't take the time to properly tag their content in simple metatag format, now going to try to figure out how ontology frameworks work? The reality is that the meta data information on the Internet is more of a social issue than a technical one. Web authors simply don't document their pages with well-formed meta data; not because they don't understand how to "tag" it but because they are lazy. Yes, there are a few organizations that try to cheat the technology by falsifying their meta, data but this is a very small percentage. The vast majority of us fail to "tag" our content because we simply choose not to. Unfortunately, today there is no real benefit to actually documenting with good meta data since most search engines fail to process the tagged information. Unless the semantic Web figures out a way that classification and documentation can be done seamlessly and easily, the semantic Web is decades away from any form of success.
Now, let's take a look at the intranet which attempt to bring many of the benefits of Web-based technology to the corporation. Okalahoma State University provides a great overview:
The "intranet" was born out of the need for groups to facilitate internal communication across geographical and time boundaries. By using common Internet protocols, or core technologies, the division can easily communicate, distribute information and facilitate project collaboration across the entire enterprise while keeping unauthorized users out. Intranets are appealing because of the savings due to decreased printing, duplicating and distribution costs. A second driving force behind the rapid growth of intranets is that the technology is extremely intuitive and easy to use without much training. Employees use hypertext links to search for and access text, graphics, audio or video, all organized into home pages. At the basic level, the division can do away with many costly corporate documents that are now produced on paper, such as human resources guides, newsletters, annual reports, maps, company facilities, price lists, product information literature - any document that is of value within the corporation. Intranets can be also be used to deliver software upgrades, provide marketing and sales support, disseminate training materials and schedules and provide employees with access to internal help desk knowledge bases. Teams can use them to exchange information and share data when working on collaborative projects.
This information is generally only accessible to employees, consultants and contractors that are employed by the corporation. Information may extend to other business partners and relationships such as outsourced development, extended supply chains or legal relationships. While the intranet has many similarities with its kissing cousin the Internet, it also has many differences. The information placed on the intranet is generally controlled and governed by organizational or political factors that are not present on the Internet. In many cases, intranets are limited to business and process-oriented information content which is generally built top down. This type of information is sometimes defined as "brand" information. Brand information can describe a business unit or technology group purpose, provide contact information, FAQs and detailed business processes. Online intranet information is critically important and saves an enormous amount of phone calls, e-mails and conversations in order to discover who, what, where, when and how internal business needs to get done. Many of these business functions can be moved to the online environment and each organization should strive to push forward in this area. Still, intranets are not built by passion, rewards conformity versus innovation and the majority of the content is edited and governed beyond seeding any original thought. Hence the difference between information applications built on passion (Internet) and ones built by salary (intranet). Accurate? You would think the accuracy rate would increase and be directly proportional to the level of governance. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The organization is an evolving entity where employees, processes and structures are constantly evolving. While the information may have been accurate at the time of publishing, the accuracy begins to deteriorate very quickly. Which leads us to ask the question that haunts the Internet itself, is inaccurate information worse than no information?
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