Monthly Archives: December 2009

‘THE NEXT 5000 DAYS OF THE WEB’ by Kevin Kelly. Parts three and four.

Kevin Kelly says, in these two parts of his whole speach ‘THE NEXT 5000 DAYS OF THE WEB’ that three important things arre going to happen to the web in the next 5000 days.
the FIRST ONE: the web is going to embody, which means that is going to take the shape of someting we can touch.
the SECOND ONE is the restructuration of the web itself. this means that every part of the web will be wirelessly conected, and all this will be very simple: you will be able to work with a computer and have access to all its complements at the same time: the microphones, the cameras, the cards.. all this things will be conected to the web.
the THIRD ONE is the idea to which the author gives more importance: he says that the web is going to suck up everything that is around it: we’re referring to mobile phones, television.. this way, people will be more and more dependent on it, and it will finally become something necessary in our daily lifes.

SPI (System for Palaeographic Inspections)

Palaeographic edition does not reproduce a text as an image, but tries to build it up accurately, giving information about the way it is written. This kind of editions have been done by hand until now that SPI (System for Palaeographic Inspections) has been given birth.

SPI makes easier and faster the palaeographic process. First of all we need to scan the original manuscript we will work on, and then we will have to separate the different writing items, the smallest signs into which the text is divided. We will then introduce some different examples of the same sign, found across the text, bacause the writing varies depending on some factors, it is not always the same, even if the person who writes wants to obtain the same results.

When we have saved some examples of the different signs found in the text, SPI will create a pattern of each sign, by comparing the examples we have given. This pattern will used by the program from now on to work on the text, and a kind of alphabet will be created.

SPI does now “know” the text we are working on, so we can use it if we need help. For example, if we are trying to translate the manuscript to a modern language and we are not able to understand a fragment, we only have to introduce it into the computer, and SPI, by comparing the patterns in its memory to the signs in the text, will show us percentages of similarity between both.

This image shows the working proccess of SPI:

Schematic of the SPI system.

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