[Sigia-l] the future of search

[Joe 10]

I think it will be when we're all happy with what we have and can all 
give up on all this searching.

Honestly though, I believe it was Clement who said something to the 
effect of "in the future there won't be 500 channels, there will be 1 
channel, and it will be my channel", or some such thing. Maybe it 
wasn't even him...

Developing some sort of "Preference Map" based on pre-filtering 
content through a continually evolving set of personalized heuristics 
will certainly cut down the noise.

If I want to ask for a reference on refinishing hardwood floors, I 
don't want to ask Google and I don't want to ask the SigIA list, but 
I'd probably ask my neat-freak friend in Sausalito who's persnickety 
about his floors. Having a predetermined set of channels you've 
personally set up because they return the results *you* want and can 
rely on will inevitably cut down search time.

Then, if there's a way to map the parts of my "preference map" 
against the portions of my social networks "preference map" which I 
find helpful (such as "tune my shopping agent into CW's wine choices, 
but tune out her sports interests" for instance) with continually 
increasing granularity then I'll spend less time searching at Google.

That is, my Father should not have to try to learn boolean logic. 
Just won't happen.

RSS and the ability to draw and aggregate content based on your 
preferences is moving us that way.

RDF and the Semantic Web initiative will help too. IA's really have 
to think of how to organize content not just so it's more human 
usable, but so it's more *machine* usable; both ends need to meet. AI 
isn't a bad thing, just the evil tin of IA.

Like I've said before, ( 
http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0204/0165.html ) let's not let 
the nerds shape the future of automated retrieval and categorization 
lest it look and feel thoroughly dismal.

Back to my meditative mood now,
/Joe

At 7:32 PM -0700 7/24/02, christina wodtke wrote:
>I used to think search was dull. But my "future of interface" brought me in
>contact with kartoo, boolistic and other strange search engines that showed
>me that search might have a long way to go yet. Information visualization,
>learning interfaces, semantic search... what's next? I've heard google gives
>a talk where they say that someday a person will just go stand in front of a
>computer and it will tell him the answer to his search with out a query
>even-- which I think is I bit far off yet...
>
>Since we're all and a meditative mood anyhow, I thought I'd ask what you
>think the next radical innovation in search will be.
>

-- 
Joe Tennis
Information Design Honcho
Joe 10 Enterprises
2430 5th Street
Studio L
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-649-1744
joe at joe10.com
http://www.joe10.com
Usability Consulting | Information Architecture | Interface Design
for Web, Wireless and Interactive Media
----------------------
Try the newer, gentler, standards compliant Joe10.com