The World Wide Web as neural net - Implications for market-driven Web enabling

This is a position paper on the World Wide Web as a neural network; a netwo rk of interconnected concepts that is becoming complex enough to start to r esemble a mind. This similarity can be used by organizations to leverage th eir information technology-enabled strategic advantage. During information technology strategic planning, web-enabling technologies should be used to align information systems with organizational vision and goals, as well as with overall enterprise architecture to optimize organizational agility. Al igning the Internet and Intranet web-enabling platforms and systems within an organization by utilizing neural network principles should enhance this optimization. The primary hypothesis is that it can be shown that the World Wide Web's birth, growth, and knowledge acquisition patterns are remarkabl y similar to those of the human brain. The secondary hypothesis is that thi s similarity can be exploited to advantage by organizations in planning the ir web site strategy to meet their market-driven web enabling strategies. ( C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.