http://ifocos.org/2007/04/24/from-thinking-machines-to-thinking-about-the-future-of-search/ INSTITUTE FOR THE CONNECTED SOCIETY Sat, 19 May 2012 07:42:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 http://ifocos.org/2007/04/24/from-thinking-machines-to-thinking-about-the-future-of-search/comment-page-1/#comment-10104 TJ Ravishankar Tue, 17 Jul 2007 05:14:27 +0000 http://ifocos.org/2007/04/24/from-thinking-machines-to-thinking-about-the-future-of-search/#comment-10104 Mr Budde's comments are so apt. Quite probably, the future of search is oriented towards being domain specific. Already there are search engines dedicated to pharma and healthcare. Or there is knuru which specialises in business and management. And so on. Underlying this is possibly the perception that natural language processing will improve with better usage which can only emerge from sustained searches by many users, who understand what they are looking for and keep improving their search. Of course, I am relying on the notion of 'wisdom of the crowds' that is presumed to govern search, except that the crowd here has a sophisticated understanding of what it is seeking. And that goes into making the search more productive. Perhaps, the taxonomy is easier to manage since we will be dealing with a closed domain. Perhaps also, there is the notion of learning by the machine. Jeff Bezoz pointed to an amazing suggestion that their system made to people who were searching for books on Zen: it suggested books which dealt with how to keep a clutter free desk, a connection that no human editor would have seen. If such suggestions can be incorporated into search, we might see more appropriate results, allowing for the possibility that the system falls for spurious coincidences. Meanwhile, in Google for example, even 'exact phrase' often yields many unconnected results, leading to the doubt that the search engine is not really capturing 'exact phrase'. Years ago, when I used to actively search Euromoney.com's exact phrase in their structured query, I invariably got very good results. Knuru, for instance, produces better results if you are looking for business information, but is still far from being good enough. Those who seek academic writings will find 'jstor' a more efficient option. As an active search user, I have seen vastly improved results when I modify my searches to accommodate many possibilities, leading me to think that it is partly a question of what connections we see in a topic. Mr Budde’s comments are so apt. Quite probably, the future of search is oriented towards being domain specific. Already there are search engines dedicated to pharma and healthcare. Or there is knuru which specialises in business and management. And so on. Underlying this is possibly the perception that natural language processing will improve with better usage which can only emerge from sustained searches by many users, who understand what they are looking for and keep improving their search. Of course, I am relying on the notion of ‘wisdom of the crowds’ that is presumed to govern search, except that the crowd here has a sophisticated understanding of what it is seeking. And that goes into making the search more productive. Perhaps, the taxonomy is easier to manage since we will be dealing with a closed domain. Perhaps also, there is the notion of learning by the machine. Jeff Bezoz pointed to an amazing suggestion that their system made to people who were searching for books on Zen: it suggested books which dealt with how to keep a clutter free desk, a connection that no human editor would have seen. If such suggestions can be incorporated into search, we might see more appropriate results, allowing for the possibility that the system falls for spurious coincidences.
Meanwhile, in Google for example, even ‘exact phrase’ often yields many unconnected results, leading to the doubt that the search engine is not really capturing ‘exact phrase’. Years ago, when I used to actively search Euromoney.com’s exact phrase in their structured query, I invariably got very good results. Knuru, for instance, produces better results if you are looking for business information, but is still far from being good enough. Those who seek academic writings will find ‘jstor’ a more efficient option. As an active search user, I have seen vastly improved results when I modify my searches to accommodate many possibilities, leading me to think that it is partly a question of what connections we see in a topic.

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