DARPA’s new Memex program seeks user-defined, domain-specific search of public information, and plans to use its groundbreaking research to fight human trafficking.
What makes this a groundbreaking new initiative? Currently web searches use a centralized, one-size-fits-all approach that searches the Internet with the same set of tools for all queries. Even though it is useful and successful commercially, it’s still a mostly manual process that doesn’t aggregate results which would be more useful for government purposes. The new search technologies developed through the Memex program will have the potential to revolutionize the discovery, organization and presentation of search results.
From the DARPA website:
“We’re envisioning a new paradigm for search that would tailor indexed content, search results and interface tools to individual users and specific subject areas, and not the other way around,” said Chris White, DARPA program manager. “By inventing better methods for interacting with and sharing information, we want to improve search for everybody and individualize access to information. Ease of use for non-programmers is essential.”
The Memex program gets its name and inspiration from a hypothetical device described in “As We May Think,” a 1945 article for The Atlantic Monthly written by Vannevar Bush, director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) during World War II.
The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Memex is available at http://go.usa.gov/BBc5. To familiarize potential participants with the technical objectives of Memex, DARPA has scheduled a Proposers’ Day on Tuesday, February 18, 2014, in Arlington, Va. For details, visit http://www.sa-meetings.com/memex. Registration closes on February 13, 2014, at 5 p.m. ET. There will be no on-site registration. For more information, please email memex@darpa.mil.
