The Future of Search Revealed

August 5, 2010

Interested in the future of search? If so, you will want to point your browser to “TEDxBoston: The Future Of Search vs. Seeing The Future With Search.” The forum was a TED conference held in Boston. Among the highlights of the summary, in my opinion, were these three points.

First, search is broad; specifically, “the human activity of seeking out information and applying it to decisions”. No problem on my end with this statement.

Second, search embraces “Social graphs, location-based search, semantic web, the convergence of search and analytic technologies, and richer content aggregation.”

Finally, search has morphed into “facets”, business intelligence, and user experience.

After reading the summary, I wondered about the impact of Lucene/Solr on the commercial search vendors. My hunch is that a shift to open source may have some ramifications for those participating in the future of search panel.

I am not sure that “business intelligence” is what search is becoming. My view is that search is a commodity. Fractionalization and niche functions seem to be increasingly evident. Examples range from in the back up stream search, mobile search which means letting algorithms do the heavy lifting, the social search stuff which relies on humans knitted together by some wacky “glue”, and embedded search which operates behind the scenes, spitting out information without the user have to do much more than touch a device. The challenge of real time content processing is an important one, and I think that some commercial vendors have a lot of work to do to handle the new data realities. Running a search, regardless of type, on a stale index is not business intelligence; it is a recipe for error.

I know that in a short time slot it is tough to mention the streams that are flowing from the “old search mountain”, but when these streams come together, a new river may cut a canyon through some established precepts.

Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2010

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Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.