The black oceans of the deep web, and the crystal clear databases by Alejandro Ochoa G. Guadalajara, State of Jalisco, Mexico Wednesday, June 24, 2009 The web is opaque. Currently –June, 2009– we are still sailing "our" black oceans. Or, we are surfing somewhat blindly the waters of the web. We accept and rely on what search engines like yahoo.com, bing.com, ask.com, google.com, kosmix.com, hakia.com, lexxe.com, answers.com/bb, wolframalpha.com, cuil.com, deeppeep.org, clusty.com, http://blindsearch.fejus.com, duckduckgo.com, yauba, hunch.com, oneriot, scoopler, powerset, et cetera, retrieve from the internet by using their web crawlers, bots or robots, ants, automatic indexers, worms, spiders, or Web scutters, and then delivering the results of their searches to us through the links their software creates. I think the time has come for someone to tell the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that soon there will be a need to create at least three new top-level domains (TLDs): .odb, .sdb, and .fdb (open databases, shareable databases, and free databases). There are several well-known TLDs: .aero, .asia, .biz, .cat, .com, .coop, .gov, .gob [in Spanish], .info, .int, .jobs, .mil, .mobi, .museum, .name, .net, .org, .pro, .tel, .travel, .tv, et cetera. I believe it would be ideal, “perfect” or good for many of us internet surfers to stop being surfers, and become internet divers or crew members of a submarine or a bathyscaphe. We would be better if we could leave the surfboard or the clipper or the yacht, and enter a submarine or a bathyscaphe in order to see directly what the deep oceans of the web conceal. The sunlight cannot light the Coca-Cola-colored or sewage- like-colored deep waters, so perhaps we need: (a) a bathyscaphe, or several or many bathyscaphes (id est, hardware, computers, laptops and desktops). (b) the powerful lights of submarines or bathyscaphes (id est, NEW or modified database software). (c) to pour Clorox (or Cloralex [a brand not related to Clorox], in Mexico) into the deep seas (id est, the collaboration or cooperation of web divers –the creators, fillers, and users of REALLY open databases– who from time to time will type data [Wikipedia-wise], and will be filling in the fields at the databases they will be interested in). (d) to use our “own human phosphorus” (maybe the one inside our brains) in order to shed some light and watch the environment, the dangerous places, the pros and cons, et cetera, as deep-sea creatures do (id est, the possibility of using our rational faculties such as discernment, thought, memory, understanding, for which we need to use our mother tongue [English, Spanish, German, Japanese...] certainly not by speaking, but by reading and CREATING new ways, by generating new ideas, new thoughts, and, as American futurologist Alvin Toffler says, “by continually shift, add, subtract, combine and rearrange numbers, symbols, words, images, and memories, combining them with emotions to form new thoughts.") –“... bioluminescent characteristics that allow deep sea fish to produce light, the only source of light in the deep sea...”. Then, maybe we shall see thousands of NEW species ... like a red octopus that steers itself with wings on its head, a carnivorous sponge, a giant spider crab, et cetera, as reported by Nature Magazine, May 17, 2007 (“Anctartic Biodiversity”). How can we enter “our” bathyscaphe in order to explore the deep web? By creating many and multiple SHAREABLE, OPEN, and FREE databases (better if some or many of these are relational and/or interchangeable and/or interrelatable databases) in websites where the ACTUAL databases would be visible, not concealed by a dark veil or by the ink of octopuses. [SQL... —or should I write MySQL— HSQLDB, CodeBase,R Language, Visio Professional 2007...] [Reverse-engineer database models and software solutions.] [Maybe it will be necessary to modify the nowadays database software, or to CREATE NEW database software.] –Let us take the case of IMDb, for example. You can type the name of an actress/actor, so you get some information (or a lot of information) about her/him, but you cannot see the REAL database. Now, please do not think I am against the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), or against the free enterprise system or the profitable corporations. No. I have just chosen that company to illustrate the matter. Neither I would want people reveal their credit card numbers, personal and private info, nor that the CIA, FBI, NSA, SBIs, reveal data out of their files or archives or databases. No. —The COLLABORATIVE databases I am speaking of, would be built up freely by the users, by the people, by the web divers, out of a sort of combination of Wikipedia and Youtube roads, wikipedia- wise. — — Imagine these open, shareable, collaborative and free databases. For example, (1). A company which makes and sells wood vertical sash windows, would be quick in adding its data (name, street address, telephone numbers, websites, e-mail addresses, products, prices, links to photos et cetera), INTO THE lines and columns of the database, into the open and free databases... (2). The fans of Guns n’ Roses would type data about this rock group, would create links to videos, photos, et cetera. (3). A geometer would type the names and perhaps the descriptions of different types of lines: straight, curved, dotted, broken, mixed, conchoid, asymptote, et cetera. The people, the web surfers or WEB DIVERS, the users, actually could open, see, watch, read, search into and manipulate the real databases in order to retrieve data OR to visit a website: by clicking with the mouse on a certain line and/or column of a specific database, they will be able to go directly to a specific website. Maybe they also could do (by means of using MySQL or some other 21st century software) the equivalent of (in dBASE III Plus): [INITIAL COMMANDS] append, average, browse, change, continue, copy, count, create, dir, display, do, edit, export, find, go, GoTo, import, index, label, list, locate, modify command/file, create/modify query, quit, recall, release, rename, replace, report, create/modify screen, seek, set, skip, sort to, store, sum, total, type, use... BUT perhaps not: delete, delete all, delete file, erase, pack. (Right now I am using terminology of a software program called dBASE III Plus, devised by the Ashton-Tate company, Torrance, California [1985-1987]. Also: [ADVANCED COMMANDS] accept, cancel, call, close, copy file, display, display files, display history, display memory, display status, display structure, do case, do while, exit, if, input, insert, join, join with, load, list, list files, list history, list memory, list status, list structure, loop, macro, modify, modify command/file, modify label form, modify query file, modify report form, modify screen file, modify database structure, modify view file, note, on, parameters, private, procedure, public, read, reindex, restore, resume, retry, return, run / !, save, select, suspend, text, update, modify view, wait, BUT perhaps not: zap. Making the web bigger and greater by typing and/or uploading and/or copying & pasting data and information in databases... just like any wordcaster/web surfer/web diver can type words, express his/her ideas and concepts about just any subject in the Wikipedia websites, or like almost anyone can upload or broadcast a video in Youtube. American futurologist Alvin Toffler (1928- ) says we should recombine knowledge. Toffler states in a book written by him and his wife Heidi Toffler, Revolutionary Wealth (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 2006), that some of the deep fundamentals of wealth are: work, time, space, and knowledge (happily or strangely, he does not mention money, platinum, gold, silver, diamonds, oil... as being deep fundamentals). We are not merely expanding the ASK [Aggregate Supply of Knowledge], but altering the way in which it is organized, achieved, and distributed. Search engines in the Web let more and more immediate and sophisticated questions, and more and more ways of combining and manipulating contents... In a previous book, The Third Wave (William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1980), Toffler wrote that in the world, knowledge was worse distributed than arms and riches. Also, about knowledge: “In each of us there is a crowded, invisible warehouse full of knowledge and its precursor data and information. But unlike a warehouse, it is also a workshop in which we —or, more accurately, the electrochemicals in our brains— continually shift, add, subtract, combine and rearrange numbers, symbols, words, images, and memories, combining them with emotions to form new thoughts.” Maybe in the not-so-distant future it will be necessary a form of classification for certain databases, of for certain lines or columns of some databases. For example, the UNESCO has a six-digit classification system to be used mainly by scholars... ... but it is a poor one, or can become a poor one in the future. Perhaps we shall need a new classification system. http://enc.slider.com/Enc/UNESCO_Nomenclature True, the UNESCO system is limited to research papers and doctoral dissertations, but we could create wider or “universal” classifications of disciplines, sciences, fields, areas, activities, et cetera. The creation of classification systems is a work which should be approached by interdisciplinary transsectorial teams. The classification systems could be arranged according to a specific scheme / design / methodology, or under a combination of two or more choices, in a flexible, elastic, adaptable, changeable, modifiable, ad-hoc-able, updateable way, with multiple variables / inputs / outputs: (a). By following, but not copying, the Dewey Decimal Classifications system, the idea of Melvil Dewey (1851-1931), for libraries and librarians: http://www.questionpoint.org/crs/ht ml/help/en/ask/ask_map_lcctoddc .html (b).