[Hidden-tech] need thoughts on future search tools for kid's book

[Eric Wilson]

Hi Amy,

Aside from the actual interface your future-kid will use, whether it's a 
virtual 3d screen in his room, glasses, or a teleputer in the living 
room, or whether it will be voice recognition, the big question you 
asked is about the search engine.  Search engines are currently in their 
toddler years, if that. So here's my (somewhat obvious?) guess - 
Interpretive Context Sensitive Search Engines.   This means that when I 
ask the question "who was the main actor in that movie where the man and 
woman write to each other, but they are from slightly different times?" 
I will be able to retrieve the information regardless of specific 
keywords, etc.  This does mean a certain amount more metadata will be 
attached to general data, and that metadata will be generated by the 
users and the search engines over time (see Otavo.com for a hint of how 
this will begin).  This context sensitivity will allow people to begin 
to phrase questions normally and search the enormous amounts of data 
more naturally.  For the most part I think we are still in the keyword 
stage of search engine development, and if I typed the question above 
into most search engines they might either strip out everything but 
nouns and then look for pages that had those words in them, or just do a 
word search.  It is creating an internal language (at least in me) in 
which we are starting to think of questions in keywords, but I am 
guessing that this current method of retrieving info from the web will 
be short lived.  Imagine being able to have a follow up question in a 
search engine? Imagine being able to have access to the web via meaning 
instead of just words. We will be able to do that with interpretive 
context sensitive searching, and that is when this vast amount of data 
will start to become more than just data, and actually become working 
knowledge.

My two cents, and no I don't have anything to do with search engines or 
the web, so....  :)

-Eric


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>
> Hi all,
>
> I've got a wonderful (I think) book coming out with Dutton next year 
> called 2030. It's all about life in the future. The co-author is James 
> Daly who founded Business 2.0 and works for George Lucas.
>
> We'd be really, really grateful for advice on what the bots of the 
> future will be (circa 2030). The original text is below and the 
> editor's suggestion (pretty much dissed) is below that. Jim thought we 
> ought to talk about "spiders," but that's so today.
>
> Anyone out there have a thought on what search tools of the future 
> will be like or called? This has to be something in R & D or 
> conceptualized today. I'll try to get you an acknowledgement for your 
> time.
>
> best,
>
> Amy Zuckerman
> HT Founder
>
>
> Here is the original text:
>
> In social studies class you are studying Africa. Your teacher asks you 
> to find an article on your desktop computer about the people of 
> Central Africa. By 2030 there is so much information on the web that 
> you need a software tool called a 'bot to help find the data. 'Bots 
> are animated computer figures that ask questions to make your data 
> search easier.
>
> Here is my suggestion for changing it...
>
> In social studies class you are studying Africa. Your teacher asks you 
> to find an article on your desktop computer about the people of 
> Central Africa.By 2030,computer memory has grown so large, that all 
> knowledge since the dawn of civilization will be available on line. 
> Using special "thinking" software called Artificial Intelligence, the 
> computer will not only find the answer to your question but will also 
> try to guess what else you might need before you ask it.
>
>
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-- 
Best regards,


Eric Wilson
PowderKeg, Inc.
www.powderkeg.com
(413) 528-3974