It takes such a horrendous discipline to become a master of a skill or
a craft, like medicine, law, science, politics, etc. and to become
recognized as accomplished, as one one of the industry experts, that I
wonder if that degree of expertise can be computerized.
Here we have so many modern day applications for databases that will
make the smart man smarter. But off the top, I see cross discipline
databases may be in jeopardy, at least in the beginning. You might have
an expert lawyer, who is brilliant in the law, but also brilliant in the
industry he represents. Will a database return results for both
industries equally well, and will the future expert be able to cross
disciplines, or industries and accomplish the same degree of expertise.
Take medicine for example. I'm not in the medical field, and I'm sure
there are people in the industry who have better ideas than I do about how
databases will affect medicine, but a common model is a doctor will be
able to type a list of symptoms and receive a list of diagnosis. Here I
question, someone, for example, my be an expert in medicine and
environmental health issues. Will the database cross both areas of
expertise.
Already I can't spell. I never was a good speller, but I did have
mileage under my belt. "You look up a word and you have that word for
life" they used to tell me in school. And I had some habits of writing
that worked into something that may have been worth saving, someday, but
that's all gone because I rely on spell checkers. I think one quandry
many writers face is as to whether or not stop writing long enough to look
up the correct spelling of a word. We hate stop our train of thought, and
go and look for the dictionary, but I developed the habit of stopping for
dictionary, to look up a word, and I had to look up fewer and fewer words.
In fact I sort of developed a style where I would stop, and look up a
word, and at the same time work on the concept I was trying to put down on
paper, and while I was looking for the dictionary, I was actually able to
better refine the concept before I continued on. My writing style
actually improved because I was stopping to look up the words. Now
however I rely on the spell checker and I don't refine my thoughts as
often and just jot, generally nonsense, on paper, or rather keyboard and
end uploading some embarassing mistakes.
It amazes me to see some of the major publications, now, that have
spelling mistakes on their pages. The little old lady, who had the iron
will of correct spelling and grammer, no longer seems to be there.
Instead, all the major publications, I'm sure, have relied on spell
checkers more and more and the errors, once unacceptable with the help of
the iron willed editor, have crept back in.
Databases have not always been the answer. I once read where a
majority of major database projects, in fortune 500 companies, where
ultimately shelved, because they were costing more than they were worth.
Companies that had spent hundreds of millions of dollars designing,
developing and implementing a database eventually started over, because
ultimately they had to go back out in the warehouse and take a physical
inventory a job the database software was supposed to eliminate.
