Ads are not an endorsement by the blog author.

FMAWG

Public Journal
 Back to Journal Archives | Subscribe to Alerts Alerts Subscribe to Alerts | Feeds
< Pain is good
Thursday, February 9, 2006 Best two hour mee >
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
February 2006
2/28/06
Familiarity Breeds Contempt
2/28/06
It's Awfully Quiet in here
2/16/06
Question Authority
2/16/06
Essential Elements
2/15/06
Content for the masses
2/14/06
Best two hour meeting of my week.
2/9/06
Where did I put those slippers???
2/9/06
Pain is good
2/8/06
Blogs
« February 2006 Archive
Thursday, February 9, 2006

Where did I put those slippers???

Hopeful | shuffle on the Karmic iPod



I really should know better.

I grab some lunch (packaged salad with fried bits of fried chicken to keep it from being too healthy).  Time to catch up on some emails, and maybe even read the details of the pages people have sent me links to.  Clearly need tunes.  So I grab my iPod...not just any iPod...the Karmic iPod.

Yesterday Google announced the Beta of Google Desktop 3.  It's an interesting read: http://googledesktop.blogspot.com/2006/02/desktop-reloaded.html (just come back and finish reading my blog when you're done).  Of interest is that you can now search across multiple computers to find your stuff.

"I still haven't found what I'm looking for" - U2 Rattle and Hum on the Karmic iPod.

Yup...you got it...as I'm reading the latest Google news, the Karmic iPod brings me a lyric to crystalize something floating in my mind.  In this case:  "is Search the ultimate organizing principle?"  I mean, I'm as lazy as the next person.  You can't fight the Second Law of Thermodynamics - without external energy, the entropy of all systems increases.  I'm pretty sure I used this as an excuse not to clean up my room when I was younger.  If my six year old son were old enough to comprehend the implications of the basic laws of physics, I'm absolutely certain he'd use this as an excuse to not pick up his socks or clean his room.  So why bother expending energy organizing your digital assets?

But I have a hard time imagining search as the primary organizing principle for all things all the time.  Finding things (either among unknown sources, or my all to familiar but unorganized collections) I can see.  But when there are enough assets to be searched, finding just the right one takes successive queries with increased query complexity.  I just don't see people thinking in SQL.  Well, I do know some people who do think in SQL...but they're not normal (statistically speaking, of course).

This sounds like work.

So I can see saving and organizing queries so that I can get the same results again.  And if the data set the query is against changes, I won't get the same results.  Hmmm...I like predictability.  It's the basis of comfort (in addition to polar fleece, which is the main reason I recycle plastic beverage bottles).

I think Search is great.  I believe it will fundamentally change the way people interact with their stuff.  The underlying search technologies will continue to bring us new and expanded capability.  I just think it's an evolutionary stage that we will progress beyond.  And I wish my son would pick up his socks and clean his room.

What do you think comes after search?

 



yhzmurphy at 1:25:00 PM EST Blog about this entry
This entry has 2 comments: (Add your own)
  • #2 Comment from yhzmurphyEntry Author 
    2/10/06 9:18 AM | Permalink
    Jeffsblog may be onto something.  Having been born with a heightened sense of sarcasm, I can see "mindreading" as part  of an accurate predictor.  Spin it with some more psuedo technical term like "context sensitive passive searching" and I think thar's gold in them thar hills.
  • #1 Comment from jeffsblog 
    2/9/06 4:10 PM | Permalink
    "What do you think comes after search?"

    Better Search, of course.  And Mindreading.