In 1876 Melvil Dewey introduced the Dewey Decimal System. His library classification system allowed new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on their subject.
 
His decimal number classification system introduced the concepts of relative location and a relative index. Libraries previously placed books on shelf locations that were related to the order of acquisition rather than topic. His system used three-digit numbers for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing the expansion of further subcategories. Dewey’s system is still used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries today.
 
Keep in mind that all this was done before the information age. Today, computers and artificial intelligence make this type of categorization simplistic. Why then haven’t tech entrepreneurs capitalized on this type of system to revolutionize the search engine industry?
 
There are twenty-nine general search engines in use today. They include the likes of Google, Baidu, Brave, and Bing. Every year or so, a handful of startups enter the market with little or no real leaps in technology. They are built along the same lines as Google: word driven; and rely on web crawlers to scan every page of a website for exact phrase matches or near subject matches.
 
Those phrase and near subject matches produce search results based on the end-user’s input. Oftentimes end-user’s have to run multiple strings to find a match on the results they’re looking for. In short, the interfaces aren’t very friendly. A search engine with a comprehensive subject index would be much more helpful.
 
 A search engine with a numerical subject-based indexing system doesn’t exist today. Nor has one ever. You can largely thank the tech entrepreneurs and their engineering teams at Google and Microsoft for this. You can also point the blame at the lack of creativity in the tech market.
 
Simply put, the existing business models do not allow for innovation or generational leaps in technology. Google and Bing’s business models are both entirely based around paid search. Their engineering teams categories search results on their worth to their respective companies rather than a website’s value to their end-users. Entrepreneurs that have attempted to enter the market have mirrored their business models.
 
Arguably, it wouldn’t take a team of NASA scientists to revolutionize the industry. At a high level there really are only fifteen categories of searches internet users engage in. The categories include:

1. News
2. Sports
3. Entertainment
4. Retail
5. Religion
6. Medical
7. Self-Help
8. Consumer Services
9. Professional Services
10. Business Services
11. Food & Restaurant
12. Directory Searches (people, maps, dating, etc.)
13. Educational
14. Weather
15. Government Services
16. Adult (Pornographic) Content

 
Artificial intelligence could be employed to group sites into subcategories underneath these categories, and from there the technology possibilities are endless.
 
Drop-down menus could be employed, and pages could be categorized based on a relative index value and/or end-user feedback. Sub-searches based on a character strings could also be employed to help users find specific goods, services, or educational materials that meet their needs.
 
Arguably, a subscription business model would work under this type of scenario. From an end-user’s perspective a Dewey Decimal-like search engine would be well worth the value, eliminating paid-search results and placing the information, goods, and services right at their fingertips with far fewer queries.

May you find clarity of vision and purity of thought as you move toward your purpose. Confront your fears, rope them down, and turn them over to Jesus Christ. Like the mustard seed, your vision will take root.
 
 
​Author: Erik Gagnon - Managing Partner, Chi Rho Consulting

Mr. Gates fully recognized the viability of the emerging markets as well as their enormous potential for scale. He also implied that social upheaval of some sort would be inevitable as macroeconomic principles played out over time. In those days, cyberspace was much like the North American continent during the 17th century. In effect, the World Wide Web would be an ethereal fountain for new raw materials with computer code comprising the basic elements.

Navigational maps would be required to conquer the terrain. They would be required to link people and institutions together; and to effectively promote trade. Also, library systems would have to be built to warehouse the perpetually renewing supply of maps. Inevitably, something along the lines of the Great Library of Alexandria would need to be built for the public at large to catch on and colonize the Web.

Intuitively, one would think that visionaries and architects devising the National Information Infrastructure would have realized this at the outset and built one into their rollout plan. Yet, it was left entirely up to the private sector to develop, build, and maintain them instead. Consequently, rudimentary libraries sprouted up throughout the 1990s. They are of course known as search engines today.

The first of these search engines was named Archie. Archie made its debut in 1990. That said, it was more of a simple card catalog than an exploratory tool for Web. Archie was followed by W3Catalog and JumpStation in 1993. Jumpstation was the first search engine to combine crawling, indexing and searching all into one package; features which are now industry standards. This innovation was followed in 1994 by Webcrawler; the first tool that enabled visitors to search for any word on any webpage, which is also of course an industry standard today.

During the latter part of the decade, competition within this category heated up as Web usage became more mainstream. Several search engines debuted during this period vying for popularity. Among the better known: Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, and AltaVista.

Then in 2000, Google gained traction. The brainchild of entrepreneurs Sergey Brin and Larry Page quickly rose to the forefront of the market largely due to their sophisticated PageRank system as well as their novel paid-search capabilities. Both were game-changing features as far as e-commerce was concerned, especially for publishers, entertainment companies and media outlets. For that matter, an argument can be made for the whole of Western civilization as well.
 

The Booty Call
Mr. Brin & Mr. Page met as undergrads at Stanford University. Mathematical geniuses armed with computer science backgrounds; they set out to change our world by  organizing and cataloging the World Wide Web in an effective and easy to reach manner. A sophisticated mathematical gear system was at the heart of their solution, better known today as algorithms. The machinery they developed was groundbreaking to say the least.

From the outset, Google’s product had an intuitive end-user interface and an engaging demeanor. It was also fast and efficient. Beyond that, Brin & Page’s search engine was generations ahead of their competition mechanically. Both factors were enormous competitive advantages and they quickly leaped to the top of the market. The company has remained there ever since; driving most of their competitors into the graveyard.
​
Being one of the greatest free-market success stories of all-time, tales of Google’s origin, founding and history are widely known. Most suggest an earnest desire to change the world for the better during the company's nascency. Journalist Steven Levy provides such an example in his book: In the Plex, recounting the origin of the Google’s infamous slogan ‘Don’t Be Evil’:

​In other words, Big Tech assumed the role of moral arbiters on behalf of the Democrat Party and their organized affiliates. If you happen to be a student of early 20th century history, this should send shivers up your spine. This is exactly what fascist and communist regimes of that period did with big industry. They seized control of mass communications deemed, distorted and twisted the truth, and stymied dissent in order to extinguish any and all opposition to their will. The atrocities committed by autocrats in within both systems speak to the consequences.

We are seeing more of the same today out of big tech. Like greedy European industrial profiteers the did with the Nazi and Soviet regimes, Silicon Valley's pirate captains are presently settling into an unholy alliance with China’s fascist regime. America's tech giants deliberately tilted their algorithms toward one side of the political equation in advance of the 2020 elections in order to to serve their overseas corporate interests; Our nation is now sliding toward tyranny. Our Bill of Rights and the free market be damned for all eternity if this trend continues.
 
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All that Glitters Isn’t Gold
Vice President Gore delivered a second speech on the UCLA campus in 1994 where he remarked that: “the future of language is in our hands. Or put more broadly, the future of communications.” He went on to share a parable by author Toni Morrison:

According to PEW research, there were 37 digital-native news outlets as of 2018 that averaged 22.4 million unique viewers each month. The typical viewer only consumed two minutes-worth of news each jaunt. Imagine you only had two-minutes to prepare your meal each morning. That leaves little time to discern what is good for you let alone digest a meal.
​
In closing, the Big Tech consortium has produced little in return for the good faith entrusted upon them by our government officials. For instance, the American literacy rate has not improved over the past 25 year. Furthermore, despite near-universal access more reading material than the world has ever known through the internet and our mobile devices, The Read Center reports that 1 in 6 adults cannot read above a 4th grade level today. More remarkable, The World Literacy Foundation recently estimated that 2/3 of Americans could not pass a basic financial literacy test covering credit, interest, investing diversification and inflation.

In other words, Leonard Cohen’s song Everybody Knows seems prophetic: “the poor stay poor and the rich get rich”. If the pendulum doesn’t adjust soon, a day of reckoning will no doubt soon occur.  As former President Ronald Reagan once remarked: "Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.” The Time of Choosing he eloquently in his speech outlined is well at hand.
​
Time to Rise Up
The time has come to break up the Big Tech’s four horsemen for the good of the nation and all of humanity. Congress must recognize Amazon, Facebook, Google & Twitter's key commodity happens to be information capital. Everything you do or say online can be monetized; meaning that an individual's right to privacy effectively no longer exists.  Worse still, beyond the inherent threat to our personal liberties and guaranteed freedoms; there is perhaps an even greater threat to our national security interests if the Big Tech oligarchs continue to remain unchecked.

With the exception of Amazon, Big Tech’s other three horsemen effectively serve as public utilities in the digital age. Collectively, the top brass within these companies effectively dictate and control the flow of information from town to town and city to city across the country. Facebook being akin to Bell Telephone and National Public Radio; and Twitter being world's “town square” so to speak. Similarly as we've mentioned, Google effectively serves as a global public library; and an argument could be made that their conglomerate also serves as a sort of mass transit system within the cyber world as far as business and commerce are concerned.

Beyond the breakup, re-formulating America's communications infrastructure will require an innovative approach. Re-tooling our National Library system seems a natural place to start. The information superhighway requires a Grand Central Station; and the National Library has the potential to serve as such if were retooled and properly scaled.

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Therefore let us stop passing judgement on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way.  As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean.  your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died.  Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil.   For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Sprit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.

“The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.”
---Henry Rollins (American Musician)
 
Up front, we want to make one thing perfectly clear: we are NOT in favor of nationalizing our primary schools nor our secondary educational institutions. Under our Constitution, these matters reside with our state and local governments; and we believe that it should remain that way. Nevertheless, it would be foolish or naive to ignore that the fabric of American education is changing dramatically during the digital revolution.

Take a look at the numbers. The education market in the United States has grown dramatically since the advent of the Internet and it's only expected to grow more over the next several years. In short: the ED hasn't kept pace with the changes; and it’s time we recognize the cultural shift that's occurring as a result. In other words, we ought to re-engineer and re-tool our educational systems; and we ought to act quickly!


THE STARTING POINT
The amount of information available today to the public over the world wide web is unprecedented in our history. Concurrently, the information age has spawned a number of innovations in the field of education. Among the most sweeping changes in primary and secondary research:

1. Search Engines have effectively replaced the traditional library “Card Catalog” - as well as librarians for the most part.
2. Wiki sites have become our society's primary encyclopedias.
3. A plethora of dictionaries, thesauruses and other reference tools are currently available at a moment's notice over the web and through digital distribution platforms.

When you take a step back and look at the big picture, it's evident that how and where we learn in this era is much different than it was before. This led us to ask the following questions: 

• Aren’t the tools and resources described above the very foundations of a public library system?  If so, why are corporations and select non-profits the principal gate-keepers of vital strategic resources like these? Does the current situation pose national security risks? 
• If guarding, growing and enhancing these resources is crucial for our nation, then shouldn’t our federal government step in and assert some span of control?
• If both are true, then when, where, and to what degree should the federal government be involved?

These are the fundamental questions we’ll address in this article. We’ll argue that Americans need to fully understand and quickly accept the fact that educational tools like Google, Wikipedia, and the Dictionary.com’s of the world all serve the public interest and ought to be nationalized to some degree. In other words, a complete re-tooling of our Department of Education is long overdue.
 

AS SIMPLE AS 1,2,3
Here’s where we’d start:

1. A search engine, an encyclopedia, and other reference tools (e.g. a dictionary and a thesaurus) ought to be considered part of our national library system.
2. It makes sense for Google & Wikipedia to become public utilities (similar to AT&T way back when),  or whole parts of the ED as soon as possible.
3. Still allow for competition within these categories through private enterprise.

The proposed system would re-tool the Department of Education; and also support crucial National Security and Defense initiatives.  We’ll explain what we mean as you read on:  
 

MOST OF US NOW CARRY A “POCKET LIBRARY”
Like 77% of all Americans, I own a smartphone; and I often download and access useful apps for personal education, writing and research purposes. The apps on my device include a couple of different Search Engines (Google and Bing), a global encyclopedia (Wikipedia), a dictionary and a thesaurus (my preferred version is Merriam-Webster), as well as a multitude of other small reference tools (e.g. area code lookups and zip code lookups, etc.).

If you were born after 1989, these things probably seem natural.  However, for those of us who are older, the Internet revolutionized access to libraries of information as well as primary and secondary research tools. Imagine: before the 1990's, people actually had to travel (by automobile or by foot) to a library to access a wide body of research materials if they weren’t fortunate enough to own them themselves. Furthermore, if their research requirements were extensive, they often had to travel to multiple locations to complete their research! 

Research tools and materials are vital necessities for individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset: people who wish to invest time and energy in determining their own futures. Nearly every entrepreneur and investor will tell you that if you want to gain advantages over your competition, you need to excel in school and continuously strive for personal growth. In other words, you spend a great deal of time in library facilities.

Any way you look at it, a public library is about education, growth. and learning. It’s a core extension of our public education system. As Campbell Brown of Facebook notes, “It comes down to what your priorities are, and if public education is about children and learning. It’s a core extension of the public education system. As kids, then every decision we make should be focused on the question of 'Is this good for a child?' And that should be the driving focus and the priority when we decide what our policies should be and what our laws should be.”

(Keep in mind that we are all considered children in eyes of our Creator to a certain degree regardless of our age...)

Currently, we have libraries in our public school systems for our children from grades K-12; and reference materials are of course vital to those systems. Ask any teacher, and they’ll definitively tell you that high-caliber tools facilitate quality education. So then, why aren't the tools in our "pocket library" considered an extension of our public education system, if public libraries in fact are?

It boils down to this: some of the tools within our aggregate pocket library must be integrated into the ED in order to effectively manage public education in the United States today. Otherwise, we may put the American way of life at risk as things currently stand.


A CASE FOR NATIONALIZING OUR POCKET LIBRARY
Is it in our best interests to have all our digital research tools developed, managed and updated by private corporations and select non-profits? The answer is unequivocally NO!

Of course, Innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity are the driving factors behind the success of the corporations that maintain our "pocket library" (Google and Microsoft as well as the Wikimedia Foundation and others).  For example, Google launched in 1996 as a research project by PhD students at Stanford University. Two years later, the company received a $100,000 angel investment; and away it went!

Nevertheless, Google has received a great deal of scrutiny and criticism recently from conservative & libertarian political pundits and conservative economists; as well as from radical leftist ideologues like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

on the right side of the political spectrum, Conservative and Libertarian political pundits accuse the tech monolith of down-ranking sites and pages that don’t align with corporate’s political positions, thereby suppressing free speech. The concerns of the conservative economists are largely geopolitical in nature. For example, Google has agreed to build a censored version of their search engine for communist China. Both sets of concerns suggest that Google deliberately stifles competition and suppresses the very principles that led to the company’s founding: entrepreneurship and innovation!

On the other hand, far-left zealots have seized upon these factors to push forth visions of an impossible socialist utopia. For example, Sanders (a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist” demagogue) contends: “You go to your public library, or you call your fire department or police department, what do you think you are calling? These are socialist institutions.”

To be blunt, Senator Sanders full of crap. The police, the fire department and the public library ARE NOT socialist institutions.  Rather, they’re public resources; and there’s are HUGE differences between the two!


BERNIE SANDERS MAY BE MISGUIDED... BUT HE DOES HAVE A POINT
Several of the tools we've listed (i.e. search engines, dictionaries and encyclopedias) and are in-fact primary and secondary research staples used in libraries the world over.  However, unlike brick and mortar libraries, the information available within our "Pocket Library" is decentralized, poorly curated and loosely maintained at the present time. 

For example, a dictionary reference tool now often appears in Google's search results when you include the word “definition” with a search term. That said, the word inclusion criteria (and definitions) appear to be determined by Google itself!

This should concern anyone who believes in the American Dream. If you look under the surface, you'll find that terms like Fascism were completely omitted from Google's dictionary tool last year after the Daily Caller questioned the definition that Google supplied.

Perhaps even more disturbing, Google has now integrated a feedback tool to report “wrong and offensive” definitions; quite possibly modifying or altering definitions on a day-to-day basis in most extreme cases.

Google currently dominates the search industry. Coupling search with a dictionary and thesaurus in effect makes Google (and the semi-anonymous voting body that supplies feedback on word acceptance) the principle arbiters of English, Spanish and a multitude of other human languages!

We must question whether it’s reasonable and prudent to allow companies like Google and non-profits like Wikimedia such enormous sway over the literacy and education of the American public! It seems to us that leverage these monoliths have over our society could in-fact fuel Fascism; very word Google omitted from their dictionary back in 2017!


THIS IS A NO-BRAINER
Clearly, the "Pocket Library" we’ve discussed here is vital to our national interests. In-fact, you could say that it’s a national treasure of sorts: Young and old men and women of varying backgrounds and ethnic persuasions scour their "Pocket Libraries" daily seeking to educate themselves, better their lives and expand their horizons.

When it comes to the tools and resources in our "Pocket Library" we need to ensure there's a level playing field.  We must ensure the accuracy and integrity of the information available to the public, preserve our national heritage and cultivate advancements that strengthen our society.

So, why not:

1. Nationalize some of the tools and materials that comprise our aggregate Pocket Library?
2. Create a repository under one branch of the federal government, where the library's tools and resources can be effectively curated, expanded and protected?

For the reasons we've described, both these ideas make clear sense to us.
​

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's socialist ideals are in-fact Utopian fantasies. They're a means to an apocalyptic end for American free enterprise, free speech and free expression. We’re not proposing an end to the free market in the case we've presented. Instead, we’re talking about centralizing a core set of vital public services; just like the United States postal service does for mail and package delivery. Not the whole enchilada mind you; just the meaty part of it.

We also argue that setting up such a service will lead to a much fairer competitive environment and open the door for a wide array of entrepreneurial business ventures within the affected industry categories. You only need look at the success of shipping companies like Federal Express, UPS and DHL to realize that opportunity will eventually open up in this space if the federal government steps in and asserts a degree of authority.

I hope more Americans soon realize the strategic importance of the research tools that comprise our aggregate "Pocket Library" and demand immediate action from our lawmakers. ​Otherwise, we’re headed toward a world where George Orwell’s "Doublespeak" becomes a real possibility.


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​Author: Erik Gagnon - Managing Partner, Chi Rho Consulting