Self-Organizing the Web

One way to help the web self-organize is to take advantage of the process by which people use it. There could be two kinds of changes made to the web as a result of satisfying a query. First, the user who makes a query about a subject that he or she is interested in, perhaps using a distributed searching system, should examine the result of the query, and if it is of sufficient value and novelty, clean it up and create a new document on that subject. The query that was used to supply the raw material might serve as a formal abstract of the document.

Second, every document that is referenced by this new document should be augmented with a link back to the new document since relevance is bidirectional. Perhaps the link should be added as a special kind of public annotation. Thus the next time a similar query is made by someone else out on the net, the new document and all relevant documents will be found that much faster. Over time, as each query adds more links, the less relevant links should be reduced in value or dropped altogether. The most relevant links to related material should remain, and thus the web will self-organize as people search within it.

A number of research questions are raised by considering this scheme for automatic searching with self-organization. How are queries, knowledge, and relevance represented in a formal way to best support this scheme? How do we deal with multiple kinds of search engines across the web, since we hesitate to require a specific set? More mundane questions involve the underlying services to support this scheme. How we balance user's need to know with provider's need to service other users? Who is permitted to augment documents with questionable links?

References

• Evolving Information Systems
• Searching in NCSA Mosaic for X using fish search.
• Automated Categorization of Web Resources - references a bunch of things that might have been referenced here.

First, let me mention my own definition of emergence as any change in the variety ("degrees of freedom") or constraint of a system, i.e. as a change in the fundamental *distinctions*. See:

• From World-Wide Web to Super-Brain
• Heylighen F. (1991): "Modelling Emergence", World Futures: the Journal of General Evolution 31 (Special Issue on Emergence, edited by G. Kampis), p. 89-104.
• Heylighen F. (1989): "Self-Organization, Emergence and the Architecture of Complexity", in: Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on System Science, (AFCET, Paris), p. 23-32.
• Heylighen F. (1992): "Principles of Systems and Cybernetics: an evolutionary perspective", in: Cybernetics and Systems '92, R. Trappl (ed.), (World Science, Singapore), p. 3-10.
• Some more recent material is available.

• Ashby W.R. (1962): "Principles of the Self-Organizing System", in: Principles of Self-Organization, von Foerster H. & Zopf G.W. (eds.), (Pergamon, Oxford), p. 255-278.
• Eigen M. & Schuster P. (1979): The Hypercycle : A principle of natural self-organization, (Springer, Berlin). Now classic work on the autocatalysis in chemical cycles: the cybernetic basis of metabolism
• Lendaris, GG (1964): "On the Definition of Self-Organizing Systems", IEEE Proceedings 52, p. 324-325.
• Nicolis G. & Prigogine I. (1985): Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems, (Wiley, New York).
• von Foerster H. (1960): "On Self-Organizing Systems and their Environments", in: Self-Organizing Systems, Yovitts M.C. & Cameron S. (eds.), (Pergamon, New York), p. 31-50. Well written, many interesting observations. Proof of meaningless of the term "SOS", first (?) discussion of "growth of phase space" route to organization, on relative information, order from noise principle.
• Yates, Eugene: ed. (1987): Self-Organizing Systems: the Emergence of Order, (Plenum, New York ). Critical collection on self-organizing systems. Includes Iberall, Morowitz, Arbib, Pattee, Haken, Caianiello, Abraham and Shaw

• SIMON (System of Internet Mapping for Organised Navigation) - software for organizing hotlists and synthesizing alternative organizations.

• Ingrid is a self-configuring, scalable, distributed, global information navigation infrastructure.

• References on Complexity and Self-Organization

• Culture, Evolution, and Computation by Liane Gabora

• The Untimely Death of Yahoo by Louis B. Rosenfeld (lou@argus-inc.com)