COMPUTER NETWORKING:CONTENT GENERATION AND CONTENT PROVISION

CONTENT GENERATION AND CONTENT PROVISION

Generation, provision, distant accessibility, and remote processing of information content can be considered the ultimate goal in introducing computer networks into an organization.

As many systems of information content can be postulated as there are organizations and appli- cations within these organizations. Successful integration of the applications within an organization requires the integration of these separate sets of information content as well. Moreover, the organi- zations’ outside relations can be made most effective if the information content within the organization is correlated to the relevant information content accessible in communicating with partner organi- zations.

As far as the structure of the correlated individual systems of information content is concerned, widely accepted distributed database techniques, and especially the worldwide-disseminated World Wide Web technology, provide a solid background. However, the structure and the above-mentioned techniques and technologies provide only the common framework for communicating and cooperating with regard to the related systems of information content. Determining what information and knowl- edge should be involved and how to build up the entire content is the real art in utilizing computer networks. There are no general recipes for this part of the task of introducing and integrating computer and network technologies into the activities of an organization.

The generation and accessibility (provision) of information content are briefly investigated in the following subsections. Also provided is a short overview of the classification of the information content, along with a subsection on some aspects of content rating and filtering.

Electronic I / O, Processing, Storage, and Retrieval of Multimedia Information

Generation and provision of information content involves a set of different steps that generally take place one after the other, but sometimes with some overlapping and possibly also some iterative refinement. In principle, these steps are independent of the type of the information. However, in practice, multimedia information requires the most demanding methods of handling because of its complexity. (‘‘Multimedia’’ means that the information is a mix of data, text, graphics, audio, still video, and full video components.)

Obviously, before starting with the steps, some elementary questions should answered: what in- formation is be to put into the stored content, how, and when is this information to be involved? These questions can be answered more or less independently of the computer network.

If the answers to these questions above are known, the next phase is to start with that part of the task related to the network itself. The basic chain of steps consists of the following elements:

1. Inputting the information electronically into the content-providing server

2. Processing the input in order to build up the content by using well-prepared data

3. Storing the appropriate information in the appropriate form

4. Providing ‘‘anytime accessibility’’ of the information

The first step is more or less straightforward using the available input devices (keyboard, scanner, microphone, camera, etc.)

The next steps (processing and storing) are a bit more complicated. However, this kind of proc- essing should be built into the software belonging to the application system. This kind of software is independent of the information itself and normally is related exclusively to the computer network system being under consideration.

More important is how to find the necessary information when it is needed, whether the infor- mation is internal or external to the organization.

The task is relatively simple with internal information: the users within an organization know the system or at least have direct access to those who can supply the key to solving any problems in accessing it.

However, the task of looking for external information will not be possible without the most recent general tools. These tools include different kinds of distributed database handling techniques. More important, they include a number of efficient and convenient World Wide Web browsers, search engines, directories, general sites, portals, topical news servers, and custom information services. With these new ways of accessing the required information and a good infrastructure as a basis, there is virtually no search task that cannot be solved quickly and efficiently, provided that the requested information is recognizable.

Classification of Electronically Accessible Information Content

The more application areas there are (see Section 8 above), the more content classes can be identified. Thus, we can distinguish between:

• Public and private contents (depending on who can access them)

• Personal, administrative, and industrial contents (depending on where they were generated and who accesses them)

• Contents of varying complexity (depending on volume of information, structure of storage and accessibility, kind of information, distribution of storage, etc.)

• Contents of varying commercial availability (off-the-shelf, semi-custom, or custom generated).

These classifications determine the requirements for the contents that are under consideration. The main aspects of these requirements are:

• Availability (where and how the content can be reached)

• Accessibility (what authorization is needed for accessing the content)

• Reliability (what levels of reliability, validity, and completeness are required)

• Adequacy (what level of matching the content to the required information is expected)

• Updating (what the importance is of providing the most recent related information)

• Ease of use (what level of difficulty in accessing and using the information is allowed)

• Rating (what user groups are advised to, discouraged from, prevented from accessing the con- tent)

Some of these aspects are closely related to the networking background (availability, accessibility), while others are more connected to the applications themselves. However, because accessing is always going on when the network is used, users may associate their possibly disappointing experiences with the network itself. Thus, reliability, adequacy, updating, ease of use, and rating (content quali- fication) are considered special aspects in generating and providing network accessible contents, especially because the vast majority of these contents are available nowadays by using the same techniques, from the same source, the World Wide Web. Therefore, special tools are available (and more are under development) for supporting the care taken of these special aspects.

Networking techniques can’t help too much with content reliability. Here the source (provider or broker) is the most important factor in how the user may rely on the accessed content. The case is similar with adequacy and updating, but here specific issues are brought in by the browsers, search techniques / engines, general sites, portal servers (those responsible for supporting the search for adequate information), and cache servers (mirroring Web content by taking care of, for example, correct updating).

Some specific questions related to rating and filtering are dealt with in the next subsection.

Rating and Filtering in Content Generation, Provision, and Access

Although the amount of worldwide-accessible information content is increasing exponentially, the sophistication, coverage, and efficiency of the tools and services mentioned in the previous two subsections are increasing as well. However, one problem remains: the user can never exactly know the relevance, reliability, or validity of the accessed information. This problem is well known, and many efforts are being made to find ways to select, filter, and, if possible, rate the different available sources and sites (information providers) as well as the information itself. An additional issue should be mentioned: some information content may be hurtful or damaging (to minorities, for example) or corrupting, especially to children not well prepared to interpret and deal with such content when they accidentally (or consciously) access it.

There is no good, easily applicable method available today or anticipated in the near future for solving the problem. The only option at the moment is to use flags as elementary information for establishing a certain level of rating and filtering. This way, special labels can be associated with content segments so that testing the associated labels before accessing the target content can provide information about the content, itself. These flags can provide important facts about the topics, the value, the depth, the age, and so on, of the related content and about the target visitors of the site or target audience of the content.

The flags can be associated with the content by the content provider, the content broker, the service provider, or even the visitors to the related sites. However, because appropriate flags can be determined only if the content is known, the most feasible way is to rely on the content provider. The problem is that if the provider consciously and intentionally wishes to hide the truth about the content or even to mislead the potential visitors / readers, there is practically no way of preventing such behavior. This is a real problem in the case of the above-mentioned hurtful, damaging, or corrupting contents, but also with any other contents as well, as far as their characteristics (validity, value, adequacy, age, etc.) are concerned.

If flags are present, filtering is not a difficult task. It can be performed either ‘‘manually’’ (by a human decision whether to access or not access) or even by an automated process, inhibiting the access if necessary or advisable.

However, the above procedure assumes standardized techniques and standard labeling principles / rules, as well as fair usage. There is still a lot of work to do before these conditions will generally be met (including codification).

More has to be done with respect to future intelligent machine techniques that could automatically solve the tasks of labeling and filtering. Solving this problem is extremely complex but also extremely important and urgent because of the exponentially increasing amount of content accessible through the Internet.