What's the value of TREC: is there a gap to jump or a chasm to bridge?

Work within the TREC Programme has concentrated on generalising, not particularising. Now is the time to think about particularising, that is, to address not further generalisation across information-seeking contexts but context-driven particularisation. This note develops this argument from an analysis of TREC work, applying notions taken from discussions of evaluation for language and information processing in general.