The modern world is overloaded with information. One of his friends posted an interesting link, someone published a video with funny cats, and the banner in the left upper page of the page offers to find out the whole truth from the life of the capital's celebrities. What to choose? But in addition to reading and viewing all these interesting and, of course, important materials, you still need to work, study and live.
Having enjoyed plenty of all the advantages of the Internet and realizing how much time the crossing the links is taking, one British teenager decided to fundamentally change everything. A guy named Nick d’Aloisio created the Summly program for devices under the control of Apple iOS, which allows you to find out in a matter of seconds what is about in the article and decide whether to read the entire text.
At the same time, the best minds thought about whether it was necessary to squeeze the Internet at all, what all this would lead to and will we remain in the information vacuum if we allow computers to sift articles through our digital sieve.
Buy me a laptop
The childhood of Nika d’Aloisio took place in the city of Perth, Australia. Future Internet Genius played rugby and cricket with peers, went to school, was fond of studying the starry sky.
When the boy was 7 years old, his family moved from Perth to London. Soon, the child persuaded his parents to give him MacBook Pro, as he was very interested in television advertising and methods for creating it. “I spent six months, literally asking for a laptop from my parents. At the moment when they gave it to me, I did not watch videos and wander over the network. On the contrary, I was interested in doing something of my own, ”says D’Aloisio in an interview with the Australian publication The Sydney Morning Held.
[[Bullet]] If you believe the rules of life of Nika d’Aloisio, a computer bought by parents in time can cause a 250,000 thousandth investment!
It was then that the first serious experiments began. The young developer used Imovie, trying to reproduce what he saw on the TV screen. Then, a more serious software was added to the software set – like the Final Cut Express, Final Cut Pro and Autodesk. Homemade cinema was soon forgotten when the teenager received his first iPhone in 2007 and began to draw up simple programs (in 2008, Apple introduced the first version of the App Store app store and released a set to create iPhone OS SDK applications).
D’Aloisio learned to write the code on his own, using the book “C ++ for dummies” as training materials, some well -known manuals for creating iPhone applications and forums. Hiding his true age, Nick talked with colleagues on Wired forums and in parallel with employees of the Massachusetts Technological Institute.
The first applications written by d’Aloisio appeared on the App Store just a couple of years ago. For example, his program Soundstumblr She knew how to connect with other iPhone as part of the Bluetooth room to find out what kind of music people listen to. Then Nick introduced the application FACEMOOD , which connected to the profile in the social network Facebook , checked the update tape, analyzed the statuses of friends and gave out the result in the form of an emotion matrix. Even then, d’Aloisio began to experiment with a semantic analysis of information, which eventually became the basis of the program, which brought the author tens of thousands of dollars and world fame.
Stages of the Great Way
The story of the algorithm summarizing about a year ago, when D’Aloisio had an account in Twitter. Nick noticed that published hyperlinks of friends are taking away a lot of time from him. Understand whether it is worth reading another opus, you can not immediately. Even worse, if you look at the tape from the mobile gadget, because the loading of the page lasts a long time. Pulled oils into the fire Google , The search engine of which, according to D’Aloisio, has long been outdated and requires improvement. The developer is sure that you need to spend less time on the study of the search results, that a person should understand the approximate content of the proposed page before it switches to it. Google offers smart pages of page screenshots, but this. Nick did not suit such a situation, and he thought about how to reduce and formalize information on the Internet.
[Bullet]] The teenager has already achieved success in the field of Internet technologies, but who knows whether the nickname can bring his program to the industrial level?
Around the same time, d’Aloisio became interested in computer algorithms – sequences of software commands. The algorithms captured his mind so much that Nick decided to use them to filter Internet content. So the application appeared Trimit -a program that allows you to https://giant-wins-casino.co.uk/ reduce any article to a couple of rows. Trimit used primitive artificial intelligence, which studied the content of the proposed page instead of analyzing only keywords, as numerous industrial analogues do.
The application was downloaded by 100,000 people, they wrote about the young developer in the press. Mention and notes of d’Aloisio and his miracle program caught the eye of Solina Chau-the key investor of the fund Horizons , belonging to one of the richest people of the planet, whether the Chinese is ka-ling. Nick already understood that without monetary investments he would not be able to develop the program and turn Trimit into an industrial standard used to automatically reduce large texts and learn key theses from them. Lee Ka-Shing investors who had previously believed in the success of Facebook, Spotify And Skype , We came in handy.
[[Bullet]] Simmly simple interface just a window for complex servers programmed for cloud calculations of the result.
Horizons employees got in touch, agreed with the parents of a minor programmer. As a result, the company was registered in the UK Summly Inc. , And the program was renamed from Trimit to Summly. Nick d’Aloisio became the owner of a new enterprise in which investors invested $ 250 thousand.
Having received such a jackpot, a 16-year-old teenager did not buy a car for himself Ferrari and did not take off the office on the roof of the skyscraper. Nick parents did not take on the role of financiers, controllers and accountants. The developer equipped a home office and hired a professional programmer to improve the program code.
Despite the fact that now the brainchild of d’Aloisio is produced within the framework of his own company, Nick does not intend to inflate the state. He wants to bring the effectiveness of the program to a new level, but before that there is still a lot of work.
The guy graduates from school, studies Russian and Chinese, is preparing to enter the university. To throw his studies, as his idol Steve Jobs did not plan to do, Nick does not plan. He goes to classes with interest, finds time for sports competitions and friends, who, in his words, do not even suspect the existence of Summly.
[[Bullet]] The world overloaded with information under a certain set of circumstances can drive even persistent individuals crazy.
As for Summly Inc., The fate of the company has not yet been finalized. D’Aloisio says that he really likes his own enterprise, gives pleasure to talk about licensing, possible profits, but he is not going to turn a small “sharashka” into a large developer. The young man wants to completely control all aspects of production, and within the framework of a large company it will not work out.
Nick does not see his future in the place of the manager Summly Inc. He is more interested in the external side of the product than coding. D’Aloisio is a supporter of the approach realized by the same Steve Jobs in the company Apple , where the chapter of everything and the whole are placed aesthetic parameters.
Terminator analyzer
All the means of automatic text reduction of the text on the market use available keywords to reduce the volume of the article. D’Aloisio paid a lot of attention to the study of ontological analysis, artificial intelligence systems and wrote an algorithm that uses a completely different method of work than similar products on the market. The Nick program looks at the text, determines its subject and uses the most suitable method of reduction that is suitable for a specific material. In other words, the article about the business will be reduced differently than the entry in Wikipedia.
The algorithm d’Aloisio knows how to study and develop independently. The program shows thousands of texts on the Internet, studies their abbreviated options, compares and analyzes. Then he applies the resulting matrix to articles that Summly users offer the algorithm.
The application is free available through the App Store. After installation, the program will offer you to open a browser Safari , create a bookmark, and then independently copys some lines of code instead of address. Summly is ready to work. To get an abbreviated version of any material, you need to go to the page in the browser, wait for loading, and then click on the previously created bookmark. The code built into it will take the text from the open page, send it to the Summly server, after which only three lines will appear on the screen – an abbreviated version of the article with the main theses.
[[Bullet]] Chinese investor Li Ka-shing does not miss the most trending Internet technologies past the Horizons investor portfolio of his company.
We tested a program with various news sites and convinced of the effectiveness of the approach. For example, from a note about Cybervor, the program correctly identified the name of the criminal, the essence of his crime and the verdict of the court. Of course, the application does not always cope with work. Sometimes Summly gives out completely irrelevant data. All this has to be attributed to a still well -well -soared code. However, in most cases, the application really gives out a more or less valuable reduction, from which it is possible to catch the essence of the material and understand whether it makes sense to follow the link. In addition to its basic functionality, Summly can send the reductions directly by e -mail.
Time machine
At the moment, the algorithm created by d’Aloisio and polished by professional programmers is undergoing relevant procedures in the patent bureau. Summly Inc. There is every chance of getting a cherished patent – similar programs to reduce use a different principle of work and, accordingly, cannot be considered full -fledged analogues of Nick D’Aloisio.
Further actions of the teenager are quite predictable: ahead of the university years. And the higher educational institution, as you know, takes much more time than the school. The author of the program will have to comprehend all the basics of temporary management, so as not to sink in business. In the future, Nick is going to present a version of the program for the operating system Google Android , as well as a browser version for computers. The developer wants his brainchild to licensed large service providers and build into their virtual regiments. Summly can wait for a great future among digital books – the D’Aloisio program will help to create all the necessary annotations for tens of thousands of literary works in a matter of hours. In addition, according to plans, the application can be used to reduce email. Summly does not have to rewrite – adaptive algorithms can do everything they need, already now.
Bubbles and filters
While Nick D’Aloisio works on a program that taps the Internet content to miserable three lines, hot discussions about the so-called filtration bubbles are on the network ( Filter Bubble ). Many analysts are sure that similar methods of automatic network editing are more harmful than benefit. One of the main activists of the movement against information filtration was the political and Internet activist Eli Pariser.
He noticed that Google’s search provides different results for different users on the same issues, and as an example was the simplest request “ British Petroleum ". Some of the visitors receive a calculation about a terrible oil spot, the main technogenic disaster in 2011, while others see various investment documents and stories about the oil company itself.
The difference in the displayed data is due to the fact that Google search mechanisms collect statistics from users; data is filtered depending on interests, early requests, geographical location, and so on. As a result, the search engine gives you what, in her opinion, is interested in you. In companies, such things are called “personalized search”, but Eli Pariser believes that such inconspicuous editing will gradually lead to the fact that we all find ourselves in personal filtration bubbles – we will see only the information that coincides with our personal opinion. All other points of view, discussion issues and controversial thoughts will be abroad.
Google is not the only one who filters the data in a similar way. Facebook is approximately the same, where not all notes of friends fall into the updates tape, but only a specific sample. What is characteristic, all personalizing mechanisms can be disconnected in the settings, but according to tradition, no one is doing this.
Pariser wrote the book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You, where the actions of Google and Facebook are called invisible automatic promotion of our own ideas and conclusions. The author believes that in a world where everything is known, there will be nothing to learn. In some ways, Eli Pariser, of course, is right-you can hardly like it if someone looks into the mailbox and sort mail. The Nick d’Aloisio program can also work in approximately the same way – to imperceptibly cut off many important data. Summly algorithms will make up a certain squeeze, you will read it, decide not to proceed to a full -fledged article. But what to do if the squeeze is not quite relevant? How we managed to verify our own experience, the program does not work in all cases, but the results can still be similar to the truth!
On the other hand, many Internet experts believe that Eli Pariser exaggerates the danger of this situation. Google filters the search results, but far from as tough as Eli Pariser says. The calculations change from the user to the user, but not dramatically.
Slate Group editor Jacob Weissber wrote an article in the publication Slate Magazine, where he asked several partners with different views to check the links of the Google search for a specific request. The system issued approximately the same results with minor changes.
