Search Innovation: The Apodora Snake in the Google Garden of Eden
August 4, 2011
I wrote about the mercurial nature of innovation in one of our longer postings this week. You can find my “Innovation” essay here. I summarized the findings of work in which I was involved 40 years ago. The main point was that big companies spend a significant amount for innovation but find that innovation is tough.
Will this snake find its way to Google? The apodora papuana. Source: http://morelia-viridis.winnerbb.com/t2343-apodora-papuana
Now think about the information in “Science Fair Gold Medalist, 17, Invents Better Way to Search Internet.” The news story describes Mr. Schiefer, who is a teenager, and his approach to searching certain social media. Think Twitter messages, which are short, cryptic, and often context free. Here’s the passage I noted:
Seventeen-year-old Nicholas Schiefer has found a better way to search small documents, such as tweets and Facebook statuses – all for his Grade 11 science fair project. The Pickering resident created an algorithm to filter through, and find relevant information. Created using linear algebra and discrete math, his algorithm is named “Apodora” after a python species with extraordinary search capabilities.
The Globe and Mail report includes several interesting quotes from the young search wizard. Here are three I marked and filed for future recycling:
- The genius in Facebook was not so much algorithmic, but in the social aspect of the network. What [Mr. Zuckerberg] managed to create very well was a desire. In search in general, we already have the desire to search. The technology is trying to catch up to what people expect.
- My algorithm tries to follow connections further. Connections that are close are deemed more valuable. In theory, it follows connections to an infinite degree. One thing which I really liked about my algorithm is that it didn’t rely on my hand coding almost anything. The computer was able to infer that certain words were related.
- It’s been shown that people are increasingly reading shorter and shorter documents.
Several thoughts. The use of a snake’s name reminded me that industry giants can be bitten unexpectedly. Search is a work in progress, difficult, and sufficiently expansive to permit numerical recipes to deliver potentially tasty results. Google will probably hire the lad.
So what? As I said in my “Innovation” essay, innovation is often easier to buy than cultivate at home.
Stephen E Arnold, August 4, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of the New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
