P.J. Brown
Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QF, UK
e-mail: P.J.Brown@exeter.ac.uk
It arises from scientific curiosity about the foundation, the nature or the limits of a scientific discipline.
Obviously this challenge is more driven by requirements of users than most, but meeting these requirements will necessitate a fundamental rethink of how we think about documents.
It gives scope for engineering ambition to build something that has never been seen before.
Absolutely.
It will be obvious how far and when the challenge has been met (or not).
It will be obvious when the challenge is met in total, but partial achievement is more problematical. It would certainly be valuable to meet the challenge just for electronic documents, but not for paper ones. To reduce the challenge, it might be viable to think only in terms of textual documents.
It has enthusiastic support from (almost) the entire research community, even those who do not participate and do not benefit from it.
I cannot be categorical about this.
It has international scope: participation would increase the research profile of a nation.
Absolutely.
It is generally comprehensible, and captures the imagination of the general public, as well as the esteem of scientists in other disciplines.
This is one of its strengths.
It was formulated long ago, and still stands.
The challenge has always been met by the majority of paper documents, in the sense they are read/write. When we started using electronic documents we threw this advantage away.
It promises to go beyond what is initially possible, and requires development of understanding, techniques and tools unknown at the start of the project.
I would hope so: the challenge as it stands is about unification: if, as a result of a fundamental rethink, the challenge is achieved, I would hope it would go -- in unexpected ways -- beyond unification.
It calls for planned co-operation among identified research teams and communities.
The project is on the hundred man-year scale of effort and could not be achieved by one group. Some of my `dream team' would be:
It decomposes into identified intermediate research goals, whose achievement brings scientific or economic benefit, even if the project as a whole fails.
One would need to work on this.
It will lead to radical paradigm shift, breaking free from the dead hand of legacy.
Certainly.
It is not likely to be met simply from commercially motivated evolutionary advance.
Word version N+1 does not seem to be heading this way.