NASA, Search Death, and Vivisimo
May 10, 2010
In an echo of my article for “Searcher Magazine” five or six years ago, I read this statement by Bob Carter, Vivisimo, “Search is broken. Results are not shared, saved or collected. Search technology doesn’t factor in who I am, what I do, where I am or what I know.” Guess not. I know that I got quite a bit of feedback (positive and negative), when I pointed out that search was dead. Shortly before it left this veil of tears, I could hear the sucking sounds from its chest wound. I think my original write up was on the Information Today Web site, an outfit that publishes some of my for-fee work.
Mr. Carter’s comment appeared in the article “Search Is Dead: Long Live ‘Findability’”. I must admit I was confused. The problems of user-aware search and personalization, retention of search histories, results archiving and sharing, and business process centric results are “sort of searchy” and “sort of findability”. The real angle is that search as I wrote during a wonderful, delayed flight to San Francisco is more like an oil spill or an ash cloud. Search is diffusing, disrupting, and creating both opportunities and dislocations.
The Federal Computer Week write up addresses none of these issues. The article is more of a marketing write up about NASA, a highly regarded Federal entity, and its use of Google technology. My question is, “Is NASA Googley or is NASA using Vivisimo to crack the findability problem?” No wonder people are confused about search and content processing systems. Search is dead and two search systems seem to be alive at least in the write up. What?
Search is dead, then it becomes findability, and then it becomes Googley. With analysis like this, the azure chip crowd looks like the brightest stars in the Bright Starbirth Region NGC 2363. Help!
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2010
Obviously an unsponsored post.
Comments
One Response to “NASA, Search Death, and Vivisimo”
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I have a hard time believing that at the end of the day things are as functional as the referenced article makes it seem. We know that Google struggles with scalability, structured data, and database content. In my mind NASA would be struggling with scalability, a myriad of data types, and multiple content repositories.
Sounds to me like hardware, hardware, hardware. . . and some expensive connectors and consulting time to get this to the point that it would start to do what I would conjecture NASA wants it to do.
My take? It’s only a matter of time before NASA starts looking at other alternatives, or to consultants to help them get this working and or expand search within the organization.