The Edge has published their annual question for 2010:
HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?
As an Information Retrieval research scientist, I of course was quite interested in what search folks had to say. I found this blurb from Marissa Mayer intriguing:
It’s not what you know, it’s what you can find out. The Internet has put at the forefront resourcefulness and critical-thinking and relegated memorization of rote facts to mental exercise or enjoyment. Because of the abundance of information and this new emphasis on resourcefulness, the Internet creates a sense that anything is knowable or findable — as long as you can construct the right search, find the right tool, or connect to the right people. The Internet empowers better decision-making and a more efficient use of time…
The Web has also enabled amazing dynamic visualizations, where an ideal presentation of information is constructed — a table of comparisons or a data-enhanced map, for example. These visualizations — be it news from around the world displayed on a globe or a sortable table of airfares — can greatly enhance our understanding of the world or our sense of opportunity. We can understand in an instant what would have taken months to create just a few short years ago. Yet, the Internet’s lack of structure means that it is not possible to construct these types of visualizations over any or all data. To achieve true automated, general understanding and visualization, we will need much better machine learning, entity extraction, and semantics capable of operating at vast scale.
It sounds like there is an increased awareness of (and respect for) Exploratory Search. I’ve heard this via private channels, but this is the first time I’ve seen an acknowledgment of the need for more exploratory search from such an official channel.
I do want to point out, however, that in order to make this work at web scale, we won’t just need better automated methods. I.e. we cannot rely solely on machine learning, entity extraction, or web-scale semantics. Rather, what is also desperately needed is a way for the user him- or herself to inject personal semantics and structure into the search, visualization, and comparison process. The search engine itself needs to be responsive to the structure that the user is giving to it, and rearrange itself around that information.
I am afraid that I am not being very clear in the vision that I’m attempting to lay out, so let me draw an analogy to parametric and non-parametric statistical modeling. Continue reading…
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