Search Pioneer Upshifts: Interview with Mike Weiner
January 6, 2009
In the 1980s I relied on a very fast search system for my personal computer. The program was Gopher from Microlytics. In the late 1990s, I met the founder of Gopher and tracker his interest in linguistic-centric search systems. I lost track of Mike Weiner, former president of Microlytics, but we spoke on the telephone a day or two ago. You can get information about Technology Innovations here. I captured his comments in an interview which is now available on the ArnoldIT.com Search Wizards Speaks sub site here.
Two comments in my conversation with Mr. Weiner struck a chord with me. Let me highlight these in this brief news item about the interview.
First, search has grown beyond the desktop. Mr. Weiner said in response to a question about desktop search:
…the desktop of today and tomorrow are connected to the “world.” So there can be very clever background processing done on your behalf that can leverage off the information you access and the information you create. The question will be, what’s useful and important to you, and can the system fetch, or generate, this, for you, and in an efficient form you can cognitively benefit from. One of the next potentials for incredible retrieval will be intelligent “information extraction.”
Second, Mr. Weiner’s new interests pivot on innovation. Technology Innovations holds patents on different facets of electronic paper or “epaper”. About the future of epaper, Mr. Weiner said:
I see epaper heavily used in educational publications, where children and learners have questions, need definitions, etc. You may see a speller and thesaurus, and translation technology coming bundled on books with electronic chips in them.
If you are interested in search and publishing in the 21st century, you will find the Mike Weiner interview interesting.
Stephen Arnold, January 6, 2008
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