Meno’s dilemma and web mining: the influence of search engines on the discovery process

The WWW representation and organization of data is based on concept association, storytelling and interaction, while information retrieval techniques, that are normally used to search and sort out information from the Web by search engines, imply instead a different model of cataloguing content: the database model. The organization of content that allows information retrieval means the creation of an interpretation, and a transformation of the row data into meaningful pieces of information, but at the same time causes the risk of misinterpreting them arbitrarily. It is therefore crucial to invent innovative Web mining strategies capable of taking into account its topological structure and its social and associative nature. This paper will discuss some of the problems raised by the massive use of search engines to gather information and give a brief outline of some new perspectives on information access through the Web, using different searching strategies and paradigms.