ll the kinds of things that you would like to have.

You can see a demo of our version of this capability, using English as the user
language and a collection of approx. 5,000 texts of English, Japanese, Arabic,
Spanish, and Indonesian, by visiting MuST (Multilingual information retrieval,
summarization, and translation system).

Type your query word (say, "baby", or whatever you wish) in and press
Enter/Return. In the middle window you will see the headlines (or just keywords,
translated) of the retrieved documents. On the left you will see what language
they are in: "Sp" for Spanish, "Id" for Indonesian, etc. Click on the number at
left of each line to see the document in the bottom window. Click on "Summarize"
to get a summary. Click on 'Translate' for a translation (but beware: Arabic and
Japanese are extremely slow! Try Indonesian for a quick word-by-word
"translation" instead).

This is not a product (yet); we have lots of research to do in order to improve
the quality of each step. But it shows you the kind of direction we are heading
in.

= How do you see the future?

The Internet is, as I see it, a fantastic gift to humanity. It is, as one of my
graduate students recently said, the next step in the evolution of information
access. A long time ago, information was transmitted orally only; you had to be
face-to-face with the speaker. With the invention of writing, the time barrier
broke down -- you can still read Seneca and Moses. With the invention of the
printing press, the access barrier was overcome -- now anyone with money to buy
a book can read Seneca and Moses. And today, information access becomes almost
instantaneous, globally; you can read Seneca and Moses from your computer,
without even knowing who they are or how to find out what they wrote; simply
open AltaVista and search for "Seneca". This is a phenomenal leap in the
development of connections between people and cultures. Look how today's
Internet kids are incorporating the Web in their lives.

The next step? -- I imagine it will be a combination of computer and cellular
phone, allowing you as an individual to be connected to the Web wherever you
are. All your diary, phone lists, grocery lists, homework, current reading,
bills, communications, etc., plus AltaVista and the others, all accessible (by
voice and small screen) via a small thing carried in your purse or on your belt.
That means that the barrier between personal information (your phon