Computing Power Up a Trillion Fold in 60 Years. Search Remains Unchanged.

May 25, 2015

I get the Moore’s Law thing. The question is, “Why isn’t search and content processing improving?”

Navigate to “Processing Power Has Increased by One Trillion-Fold over the Past Six Decades” and check out the infographic. There are FLOPs and examples of devices which deliver them. I focused on the technology equivalents; for example, the Tianhe 2 Supercomputer is the equivalent of 18,400 PlayStation 4s.

The problem is that search and content processing continue to bedevil users. Perhaps the limitations of the methods cannot be remediated by a bigger, faster assemblage of metal and circuits?

The improvement in graphics is evident. But allowing me to locate a single document in my multi petabyte archive continues to a challenge. I have more search systems than the average squirrel in Harrod’s Creek.

Findability is creeping along. After 60 years, the benefits of information access systems are very difficult to tie to better decisions, increased revenues, and more efficient human endeavors even when a “team of teams” approach is used.

Wake up call for the search industry. Why not deliver some substantive improvements in information access which are not tied to advertising? Please, do not use the words metadata, semantics, analytics, and intelligence in your marketing. Just deliver something that provides me with the information I require without my having to guess key words, figure out odd ball clustering, or waiting minutes or hours for a query to process.

I don’t want Hollywood graphics. I want on point information. In the last 60 years, my information access needs have not been met.

Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2015

Comments

One Response to “Computing Power Up a Trillion Fold in 60 Years. Search Remains Unchanged.”

  1. John O'Gorman on May 25th, 2015 10:56 am

    Stephen, I think I know why search sucks.

    If you are interested and send me your email address I will send you the latest.

    John O’

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