Way ot dd notes from a few years back: ok, found his original notes I think,very dusty so not sure if this all makes any sense, but good for a Sunday afternoon read fwiw... anyway, thank you XX for letting me borrow and also to lesnshawn for turning me onto this NEOM....:
Ok, here we are with our Visual Google software (referring to an article XXXXXXXXX posted a while ago), which is a search engine that search on images instead of words. Now, using conventional semiconductors based computers, we will endup comparing digitalized pictures, bytes by bytes, and we will basically be using a variety of well known pattern recognition algorithms, and this is will endup being very very slow. This is because our current computer paradigm has been suited for business purpose, dealing with numbers and words, not with entire pictures! We adapted pictures and sound to it, however, we just adapted! This is where the optical computer comes in play, causing a paradigm shift.
In an optical computer, the images would not be digitalized, and will be kept in pure optical form, then the pattern matching will be done later between light patterns. Once we reach that degree of opticalization (a word I just found) of computer, than our visual pattern search will largely outperform any of the conventional computers. Now, the real challenge is the media that will hold our optical patterns, which has to be completly not mechanical (because way too slow). For example, say our media is a kind of gaz that is able to retain light patterns (sound like a memory cube...LOL), then we will be able to search through these
light patterns at near light speed and not be restricted to those very slow disk technology, because these are after all mechanicals. These optical computers will be used first as visual search engines,mainly for military and later for the public. After all this is where the Internet came from, the military, namely the US army.
Today, we are using optical components and adapt to very old
computer models that are suitable to the semiconductors paradigm. In the next 5-10 years, I believe we will transit into a totally new hardware computer model that will be pure optical. The main problem for such optical computer is the current I/O paradigm that we are using, which is very very slow. By seeing what IBM and Corning are trying to do, they seems to challenge that I/O problem (computers interconnection), and this is probably the most complicated problem. Because hard disk and stuff like that will gradually disapear from computers, and only the DVD technology will be left for optical computers, and this stricly for archiving purpose. Therefore, the main I/O operations we will have, will be between computers.
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article about Visual Search engines, not sure of the year, I think 2002 or 2003...anway, glad I was fishing in the right hole and glad I was directed to neom by a friend....one can not escape fate as Merlin once told King Arthur, lol...eot
Sailing the Sea of Images
> Could Visual Search Engines Be the Web's Next Frontier?
> Commentary
> By Michael S. Malone
> Special to ABCNEWS.com
> Oct. 16— The Internet may be a landscape of words today, but its
> destiny is to become an ocean of images.
>
>
> The trick will be in the navigation.
> You don't have to be a dedicated Web surfer to understand why
words
> (and numbers) dominate the Net. A picture may be worth a thousand
> words, but the data density of those thousand words is a heckuva
lot
> lower than for that picture.
>
> Thus, you can not only download most of a book before you can
> receive a single, photographic quality image, but you can also
start
> reading the text from the start, while the image is still just a
few
> thin stripes.
>
> A decade ago, when transmission speeds were still measured in
> thousands of bits per second, the Web was all words. Those of you
> readers who were online in those days remember how thrilling it
was
> to even see a picture forming on the screen — and then how
> frustrating it was to wait while the damn thing froze up
everything
> else for 10 minutes while it downloaded one pixel at a time.
>
> Of course, that is no longer the case. As bandwidth increased, so
> did the graphic complexity of the content. These days, the Web is
a
> panorama — some would say a wasteland — of images, from movie
stills
> to porn to pictures of auction items and book covers to spam. As
> broadband has reached America's homes in the last two years, it
has
> brought in its train simple video, from brief movie trailers to
> extended cartoons.
>
> Looking ahead, you can already predict the future: full-length
> downloadable movies available in near real-time (killing the video
> and DVD industries), online television, and do-it-yourself FX,
> simulations and animation.
>
> That's the predictable future, the usual extrapolation of
technology
> from the present, paced by Moore's Law. More bandwidth equals
> prettier pictures and longer movies.
>
> Transforming the Language of the Web
>
> But there is a second track in the history of tech. This is the
> long, and usually unpredictable, chain of technological
> discontinuities; the new inventions and products that seemingly
come
> out of the blue and turn everything upside down.
>
> The transistor, the integrated circuit, the microprocessor, disk
> memory, the calculator, the PC, desktop publishing, the router,
the
> Web, the search engine, and others, each, in some measure,
radically
> transforming the world around us, while creating vast new
> industries. In retrospect these breakout technologies may seem
> inevitable, but almost no one (except for their inventors,
> sometimes) sees them coming.
>
> I can't help thinking that the Web itself is due for just such a
> discontinuity. Sure, on-demand movies and online TV are incredibly
> exciting; but they are nevertheless logical extensions of the
> present at the application level. Real transformations take place
> not on deck with the tourists but down in the engine room. Real
tech
> breakthroughs take off the panel and mess with the wiring inside.
>
> What that says to me is that the next great shift for the Internet
> will be in the language of the Web. By that, I mean the words,
> because for all the pictures and videos, the Web remains a word-
> driven medium.
>
> A Digital History, Frame by Frame
>
> For the last couple of years, I've been gathering clues that this
> transformation to a true Visual Web is already under way. Just
this
> week I ran across just such a glimpse of this future.
>
> On Monday, Reuters carried a story announcing that Britain's
> Independent Television News (ITN) had put on the Web all 3,500
> hours, and 75 years, of British Pathe newsreels, covering every
> major news event from the Boer War to Swinging Sixties London.
>
> Better yet, using digital technology, ITN had scanned and copied
> every frame of these 35mm films — thus producing a database of
more
> than 12 million historic photographs. (You can visit it, even
order
> images, at www.britishpathe.com — but wait a few days, the crush
of
> the curious appears to have slowed it to a crawl.)
>
> ITN bills the site as "the world's first digital news archive." I
> think it's more than that: it's a glimpse of what the Visual Web
can
> be, and how far we still have to go to get there.
>
> The power of the Pathe site is self-evident the moment you see it:
> just type in a term, say, "The Beatles" and up pops a score of
> newsreel films; the Fab Four receiving an award, in concert,
> returning by plane from their U.S. tour, etc. You can watch the
> newsreels, or step through them frame by frame (or every fifth
> frame, or whatever you like), pick out the one you like, then blow
> it up or buy it.
>
> It's amazingly cool. What do you want to see? Titanic survivors,
> train wrecks, the British fleet, Marilyn Monroe? Here you go:
> hundreds of images of each for your inspection. They'll even sell
it
> to you in Powerpoint format.
>
> The Race Is On
>
> Yet, for all of its appeal, the Pathe site is also desperately and
> frustratingly clunky. Why? Because even though we now have
billions,
> and soon trillions, of images on the Web (think: every picture and
> movie ever made) we still have no visual grammar to find them.
>
> Sure, on the Pathe site you can call up a newsreel showing the
> Rolling Stones in concert, but to get that perfect image of Brian
> Jones, you are going to have to search through all the frames.
>
> Until we find that new methodology, until we develop a visual
> grammar for the Web, the next great transformation of the Internet
> will have to wait. This is the great Longitude problem of
> Cyberspace. Want to make a billion dollars? Then come up with the
> visual equivalent of Netscape Navigator, Yahoo! Search or best of
> all, Google.
>
> What the world needs right now for the next stage of digital
culture
> is a technique to rocket across the Net in search of a particular
> image or video clip. Perhaps the search will be prompted by a
> drawing or a digital photograph — and the search methodology might
> range from simply looking at color or form, to some incredibly
> sophisticated heuristic. Whatever it is, this visual search engine
> must be fast, intuitive and affordable by the general public.
>
> A few years ago I came across a start-up team that had developed a
> rudimentary visual Google, but the team fell apart. I suspect some
> of the big companies are already working on this problem, as are
> some universities. Still, my gut tells me that the solution will
> come from some lone inventor with a wholly new approach to the
> problem.
>
> So, the race is on. Create a visual search engine, copyright it
(or
> better yet, patent it if you can), license it and then sit back
and
> rake in your billion bucks — and immortality.
>
> Oh, and if you got the idea here, be sure to send me my 10 percent
> commission.
>
>
> Michael S. Malone, once called "the Boswell of Silicon Valley,"
most
> recently was editor-at-large of Forbes ASAP magazine. His work as
> the nation's first daily high-tech reporter at the San Jose
Mercury-
> News sparked the writing of his critically acclaimed The Big
Score:
> The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley, which went on to
become
> a public TV series. He has written several other highly praised
> business books and a novel about Silicon Valley, where he was
> raised.
