Some Principles of Information Storage and Retrieval in Society

Particularly because of the great amount of information that a social memory can contain, relevant information is quite often difficult to find and these difficulties become even larger when the needed information is dispersed widely in time and in space or when special barriers are erected to protect such information from being discoverd. I like to consider search procedures as those processes that are employed to locate relevant information in time, in space, and in kind, often against apparently insurmountable odds. Research and development problems provide the most prototypical examples of situations in which efficient search procedures are decisive in bridging an existing information gap. In order to incorporate into a design as much information as possible, it is quite common that a very large number of reports may have to be read, most being irrelevant in fact. Finding a solution then depends not so much on the retrieval of information rather on the efficiency of the search procedure available. Because research reports tend to be somewhat more standardized (at least clearly distinct and written in the same medium) computers have already provided useful selection aids for literature references. Another problem of search is criminal detection. This may involve identifying one out of thousands of widely dispersed and highly mobile suspects. Among the many clues that may become available during an investigation, most are likely to be unproductive and the successful conclusion of a case presumably depends on following the right clues early enough and without being sidetracked. Related to such situations is the problem which many intelligence departments face when trying to obtain information that someone else deliberately hides or encodes into an unrecognizable cipher. Less extreme though socially probably more