அரபிக் மொழியின் தோற்றம் நபிகள் நாயகம் தந்த திருக்குரான் மறையிலும் [1], தமிழ் மொழியின் தோற்றம் சங்கப்புலவன் தந்த 18 மேல்கணக்கு நூல்களிலும் உள்ளது, கீழ்த்திசை உலகின் அரிஸ்டாடில் என்று புகழைப் பொருளிலக்கணம் இந்தியச் செம்மொழிகளில் முதன்முதலாகத் தந்ததால் அடையும் தொல்காப்பியர் உலகை நானிலமாகப் பகுத்தார். அவரே சில காலம் சென்றபின் கொற்றவையின் திணையாக பாலைத்திணையை நடுவணதாக அமைத்தார். அதனால், நான்குதிணை ஐந்திணை ஆயிற்று. சென்னையில் 1998-ல் தோன்றிய மின்னிதழ் ’ஆறாம்திணை’. முனைவர் நா. கண்ணன் இணையத்தை ஆறாம்திணை என்கிறார். அறிவியலும், ஆராய்ச்சியும் பெருக மின் தமிழ்க் குழுமங்கள் வழிவகுக்க வேண்டும். இந்தியாவின் செம்மொழி இரண்டனுள் ஒன்றாகிய செந்தமிழ் வளர்ச்சிக்கு ஆறாம்திணை ஆய்வுகள் உதவும். மின் தமிழ் குழுக்களிலே ஆராய்ச்சி உலகத் தரமானதாக விளங்க வடமொழி, திராவிட மொழி பேராசிரியர்கள் உலகின் தலைசிறந்த பல்கலைக்கழகங்களில் இருந்து எழுத வேண்டும் என்பது என் நீண்டகால ஆவல். ஆமை நீந்துவதால் தமிழர் வரலாறு தெரிகிறதா? அத்தியூத்து என்பதுதான் கொரியாவில் அயோத்தியா? சுமேரியன் தமிழா? இல்லை, கொரியன் மொழி தான் தமிழா? பாண்டிய இளவரசி சங்க காலத்தில் கொரியா சென்றாளா? ... இதுபோன்ற முக்கியமான ஆராய்ச்சிக் கேள்விகள் மின் தமிழ் குழுமங்களில் மட்டுமல்லாது, உலகப் பல்கலைக்கழகங்கள் எடுத்து ஆராயும் காலத்தை மின் குழுக்கள் ஏற்படுத்த வேண்டும்.
Ludwig Feuerbach first wrote in his famous study of Christianity in 1841: ""It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, Man created God in his own image." The statement plays on a well-known passage from the bible. 'God created man in his own image' Gen. 1:27. Feubach-ன் தத்துவம் இந்தியாவில் நன்கு தெரிவது பண்டைத் தமிழர்களின் சமய ஆராய்ச்சிகளில்தான். 4500 ஆண்டுகளாய் கொற்றி-விடங்கர் வழிபாடும், பிற்காலத்தில் அந்த விடங்கர்/நக்கர் வருணன் ஆனதும், அதன் பின்னர் சிவன் ஆனதும் பற்றி ஆய்வுக் கட்டுரைகளில் எழுதியுள்ளேன். சங்க காலத்தில் சிவபிரான் வழிபாடு தலைதூக்காத காலத்தில் வாழ்ந்தவர் தொல்காப்பியர். எனவேதான் தனியாக சிவனுக்கு தனித்திணை இல்லை. முருகவேளுக்குக் குறிஞ்சியும், மாயவனுக்கு முல்லையும் அளித்த காப்பியர், நெய்தலுக்கு சிவனாக விடங்கர்/நக்கர் பரிணாம வளர்ச்சி அடையுமுன் இருந்த வருணனை நெய்தற்றெய்வம் என்றாக்கி நமக்களித்தார். ஐந்திணைக் கடவுளிலும் சுவையானவன் மருதநிலக்கடவுள் இந்திரனே ஆவான். ஏன் காப்பியர் போன்ற சமண சமயத்தவர்கள் இந்திரனை மருதத்திணைத் தெய்வம் என்று தந்தனர் என்பது மருதப் பாடல்களைப் படிப்போருக்கு உடனே விளங்கிவிடும்.
இந்தியாவின் இரண்டு செம்மொழிகள் தென்மொழி, வடமொழி. தென்மொழி வடமொழியின்றும் பிறந்ததன்று, தனிவேர் கொண்டதென்றும், 25+ மொழிகள் தமிழிய (Dravidian) மொழிகள், இந்திய வரலாறு அறிய அவற்றின் ஆய்வுகள் முக்கியம் என்றும் அறிவித்து ஆய்வுலகில் நாட்டியவை மேலைப்பல்கலைக் கழகங்களே, விஞ்ஞானம், தொழில்நுட்ப வளர்ச்சிக்கும், தமிழின் உலகப் பராவலுக்கும் மேலைநாடுகளின் பல்கலை ஆய்வு கண்ட இணையவெளி பயன்படுகிறது. ஆறாந்திணை என்பதே எண்ணிறந்த வலைப்பக்கங்கள் தான். அவை யாவற்றையும், அணுஅணுவாக அறிந்த துழாவி அதன் தெய்வம் என்பது பொருத்தமானது.
அரிய ஆராய்ச்சிகள் ஆறாம்திணையான இணையத்தில் நடக்கின்றன என்பது அனைவரும் அறிந்ததே. கல்லூரி மாணவர்கள் பங்குபற்றி மேலும் ஆய்வுகளை வளர்க்கும் சூழல் தோன்றியுள்ளது. ஆறாம்திணையான இணையத்தமிழுக்கு தெய்வம் யார்? சந்தேகம் இல்லாமல் கூகுளாண்டவர் தான் என்கிறார் கடலூர் திவாஜி ஸார். பல பழம்நூல்களை மின்னூல்கள் ஆக்கும் திரு. திவாஜி அவர்கள் சொல்வதே சரி. அரபி பாஷை தோற்றம் நபிநாயகத்தால், வேதங்கள் ரிஷிகளால், தமிழ் பாஷை சங்கப் புலவோரால் தோன்றுகிறது. ஆறாம்திணை இணையம் தோன்றிய சில காலம் சென்றபின் அதன் தெய்வம் கூகுளாண்டவர் பிறந்தார். கூகுளாண்டவரைப் பிறப்பித்தவர் ஜானதன் பிலெட்சர் பற்றி அறிவோமாக. Ludwig Feuerbach first wrote in his famous study of Christianity in 1841: ""It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, Man created God in his own image." Tamil Jaina authors fittingly chose the gods for 5 thiNai-s: varuNa for Neytal, Indra for Marutam, Muruku for KuRiJci, Maal for Mullai, KoRRi for Paalai - these deities are created by Shramanas looking at the image of Men and their conduct in those specific tiNai-Landscapes. Now, Tamils are unanimous that Google Andavar is the reigning teyvam for aaRaam-tiNai (internet). Having seen many poets and pulavar-s in the last 5 decades, it is very interesting to see new pulavar-s, "tiDiir" pulavars like "tiDiir" iDli, saambaar, ravai, & so on, mainly thanks to Google Aandavar. Let the Pulavar tribe increase, let us all make at least 100K Tamil books available for aaRaamtiNai deepening.
நா. கணேசன்
That was almost 1400 years ago. The Arabic of the Koran remained a prestigious and nearly unchanging standard throughout the Islamic world. This is what most Arabs consider "Arabic". But all spoken languages change, all the time, and the Arabic people actually used on the streets and in their homes, predictably enough, changed quite a lot in those 1400 years. Today, the Arab world is sometimes compared to medieval Europe, when classical Latin was still the only "real" language most people wrote and studied in—but "Latin" in the mouths of its speakers had become early French, Spanish, Portuguese and so on. Today, we recognize that French and Portuguese are different languages—but Arabs are not often sure (and are sometimes at odds) about how to describe "Arabic" today. The plain fact is that a rural Moroccan and a rural Iraqi cannot have a conversation and reliably understand each other. An urban Algerian and an urban Jordanian would struggle to speak to each other, but would usually find ways to cope, with a heavy dose of formal standard Arabic used to smooth out misunderstandings. They will sometimes use well-known dialects, especially Egyptian (spread through television and radio), to fill in gaps. ”
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Jonathon Fletcher: forgotten father of the search engine
By Joe MillerBBC News
Until researchers tracked him down a few years ago, Jonathon Fletcher was not aware he had built the first modern search engine
As Google celebrates its 15th birthday, the web giant has become a byword for information retrieval.
But if you put Jonathon Fletcher's name into a Google search, none of the immediate results hint to the role he played in the development of the world wide web.
There is certainly nothing that credits him as the father of the modern search engine.
Yet 20 years ago, in a computer lab at the University of Stirling in Scotland, Mr Fletcher invented the world's first web-crawling search engine - the very technology that powers Google, Bing, Yahoo and all the major search tools on the web today.
Solving search
In 1993, the web was in its infancy.
Mosaic, the first popular browser with an interface that resembles the ones we use today, had just been released, and the total amount of web pages numbered in the thousands.
But the question of how to find things on the web had not been solved.
Mosaic had a page called What's New, which indexed new websites as they were created.
The problem was that in order for developers at Mosaic to be aware of a new website, its creators would have to write to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - where the browser's team were based.
At about this time, Jonathon Fletcher was a promising graduate of the University of Stirling, with an offer to study for a PhD at the University of Glasgow.
Before he could take his place, funding at Glasgow was cut, and Mr Fletcher found himself at a loose end.
"I was suddenly very motivated to find a source of income," he recalls, "so I went back to my university and got a job working for the technology department."
It was in this job that he first encountered the world wide web and Mosaic's What's New page.
While working at at his alma mater, the University of Stirling, Jonathon Fletcher discovered the world of the web
While building a web server for the university, Fletcher realised the What's New page was fundamentally flawed.
Because websites were added to the list manually, there was nothing to track changes to their content. Consequently, many of the links were quickly out-of-date or wrongly labelled.
"If you wanted to see what had changed you had to go back and look," Mr Fletcher says of Mosaic's links.
"With a degree in computing science and an idea that there had to be a better way, I decided to write something that would go and look for me."
That something was the world's first web crawler.
Mr Fletcher called his invention JumpStation. He put together an index of pages which could then be searched by a web crawler, essentially an automated process that visits, and indexes, every link on every web page it comes across. The process continues until the crawler runs out of things to visit.
Ten days later, on 21 December 1993, JumpStation ran out of things to visit. It had indexed 25,000 pages.
To date, Google has indexed over a trillion pages.
Birth of search
Mr Fletcher quickly built an easy-to-navigate search tool for the index, stuck his website on Mosaic's What's New page, and the world's first modern search engine was in operation.
"I would say that he is the father of the web search engine," says Prof Mark Sanderson of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, who has studied the history of information retrieval.
"There have obviously been computers doing searches for a very long time, and there were certainly search engines before the web. But Jonathon was the first person to create a search engine that had all the components of a modern search engine."
However, while Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are household names, Mr Fletcher, who now lives in Hong Kong, has received little recognition for his role in the evolution of the internet.
The fact that his project was ultimately abandoned may not have helped.
As JumpStation grew, it required more and more investment - something which the University of Stirling was not willing to provide.
"It ran on a shared server," explains Mr Fletcher. "There wasn't a lot of disk space and back then disks were small and expensive."
Space control
By June of 1994, JumpStation had indexed 275,000 pages. Space constraints forced Mr Fletcher to only index titles and headers of web pages, and not the entire content of the page, but even with this compromise, JumpStation started to struggle under the load.
And so did Mr Fletcher. "It wasn't my job," he says. "My job was to keep the student labs running and do system administration and technology odd jobs."
Mosaic's What's New page, pictured here months before JumpStation was founded, was a basic index of websites
A job offer to go and work in Tokyo proved too strong to resist, and the university did little to try and keep him, or JumpStation, from leaving.
"I was obviously not very successful in convincing them of its potential," says Mr Fletcher.
"At the time I did what I thought was right, but there have been moments in the last 20 years where I've looked back."
Prof Leslie Smith, head of Computing Science and Mathematics at the University of Stirling, who remembers Mr Fletcher, acknowledged that JumpStation "proved to be ahead of its time", and told the BBC that "colleagues at Stirling are delighted he is gaining the recognition he deserves for his achievements".
Looking forward
But despite the disappointment Mr Fletcher suffered, his pioneering technology would be the foundation of all subsequent web search engines.
"The web community in 1993 was very small," says Prof Sanderson. "Anybody who was doing anything on the web would've known about JumpStation.
"By the middle of 1994 it was becoming clear that web search engines were going to be very important. Google didn't come out until 1998 and what Jonathon was doing was in 1993."
Jonathon Fletcher (centre) at a conference in Dublin earlier this year, where he was the guest speaker on a panel alongside Google and Yahoo! representatives
Mr Fletcher received some recognition for his achievements at a conference in Dublin a few weeks ago, where he was on a panel with representatives from Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. But in his speech, he talked about the future.
"In my opinion, the web isn't going to last forever," he told the audience. "But the problem of finding information is."
"The desire to search through content and find information is independent of the medium."
The current medium is making a lot of money for those who followed him, but the Scarborough-born pioneer has no regrets.
"My parents are proud of me, my wife is proud of me, my children are proud of me, and that's worth quite a lot to me, so I'm quite happy."
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Further,
Net results: Beautiful complexity of the internet search
It’s an utterly banal observation to state that internet search has become a ubiquitous part of most people’s lives.
But it still is a kind of miracle nonetheless.
Almost all of us with an internet connection of any sort surely use a search engine daily, most likely Google, so popular and so much a part of life that it has become a small “g” verb. People even use them as multifunctional tools: they’re spellcheckers, measurement and currency converters, calculators (yes, they do that too) and more.
However, it’s the search function that still astonishes, if you take a moment to think about it.
Have a question, any question, from the simple to the most infernally complex? The answers are all there, even though getting them has become such an everyday bit of magic that those of us who grew up in an analogue, internetless world forget the labour and time it took to get information pre-web.
How to build an engine
But search engines did not spring into being, fully formed, at the dawn of the internet age.
But search engines did not spring into being, fully formed, at the dawn of the internet age.
Back in the early days, when there were far fewer internet sites – much less those new, visual representations of information online known as web pages that began to emerge in the 1990s – it was very, very hard to find things online.
You had to already know what you were looking for, and where on the internet it was located. It was as if you had to know, in advance, the exact title and location of a book you were looking for in a library. You couldn’t just arrive and search for suggested books on the topic of sailing, or the 1916 Rising, or growing roses.
A Dublin audience was brought back to those early days in a fascinating panel discussion that kicked off the recent 36th annual Sigir (Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval) conference held at Trinity College.
Among the panelists for the keynote session in the Mansion House was Jonathan Fletcher. He is now working in Hong Kong in the banking information technology sector but, back in the day, he was the fellow who set up the very first internet search engine, Jumpstation.
“I had one problem. I knew nothing about information retrieval, but like a lot of coders, I had an itch to scratch – so you write code. What I wrote was very, very simple. I would go visit a couple of URLs, and record that I’d collected them,” he told the audience.
He hand-entered information about each site – “I settled for the [web page] titles and headings” – and created a search engine that let people search by either titles or headings. Simple, but revolutionary. Within six months, by the end of 1993, he’d documented 25,000 pages in this way. A year later, he’d done 280,000. It was an extraordinary labour of love, done for free to help others, like so many of the web’s best features and tools.
But of course, pre-search engines, there was no easy way for an internet user to even find out that Jumpstation existed. Like everyone else interested in promoting their new website, he submitted it to Mosaic, the first web browser, who listed it on their “What’s New” page (anyone else remember that? I recall how exciting it was to check the page for the latest websites that had come into being – so many, so quickly, on so many subjects).
It featured there for only a day, but the power of the crowd was already emerging as an internet phenomenon, and word of mouth ensured internet users worldwide began to use Jumpstation. The site quickly faded away, though, as Fletcher took a job in Hong Kong and found he didn’t have time to work and have a personal life and also maintain the site. But it seeded the ground for what was to come – index sites such as Yahoo, the first search engines such as Ask Jeeves, Excite and AltaVista, and ultimately Google, Bing and new challengers such as WolframAlpha and DuckDuckGo.
Future of searching
Towards the end of the discussion, Fletcher nailed the biggest challenge for today’s search engines: “The amount of signal that everyone else is scrambling for is very small.” Billions of webpages, and many of them junk, are noise obscuring the “signal” pages that contain good information in response to a query.
Towards the end of the discussion, Fletcher nailed the biggest challenge for today’s search engines: “The amount of signal that everyone else is scrambling for is very small.” Billions of webpages, and many of them junk, are noise obscuring the “signal” pages that contain good information in response to a query.
He believes the web is just today’s presentation format for information online – just as the command line interface, just text on the screen, was once the way people accessed the internet, before the era of the world wide web. “In my opinion, the web isn’t going to last forever,” he said. “But the problem of finding information is.”
