Bedtime for Billy

“So,” the old man said, pulling a chair up close to the bed, “how’s my favorite grandson?”

“Okay, I guess,” the boy replied, “Mom says I might have ammonia.”

“You mean pneumonia.”

“Whatever,” the boy replied, trying not to smile.

“So, how’s about I tell you some good stories; there’s been a lot of speculation lately about the future of search engines - you still like search engines don’t you?”

The young man’s eyes brightened. “Boy, do I! Just more than anything! What are they saying?”

“Calm down, calm down,” Grandpa chuckled. “You just relax and I’ll tell you all about search engines in the year 2010, or 2012 even. Just remember, this is just speculation, none of them can actually do these things yet.”

“What things? Like what?” The boy was sitting up now, his top sheet clutched in his hands.

“Well, you know how most search engines show you a list of ten results after you enter a query?”

“Yeah.”

“And how you have to hit ‘next’ or ‘previous’ over and over to see more results?

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, in the future, you’ll be able to just scroll up and down as much as you like. There won’t be any pages! You can just turn your mouse wheel down to number 500 if you want!”

Grandpa beamed.

The boy frowned. “But Grandpa, they can do that now. I just tried NoFoodHere; it does it now.”

“Well now, Billy, I’ve never heard of that one; I was thinking more of the big search engines. Listen, I’ll tell you another one. Someday you’ll be able to look at a results page and see a hundred results, all at once! Even if you can scroll up and down, you can’t do that!”

The old man paused a little dramatically. His head gave a quick, ’so there’ kind of nod.

“Oh Grandpa,” said the boy, “KoolTorch has been doing that for months; it’s no big deal anymore.”

Now it was Grandpa who was sitting up straight!

“Yes, but can you move around a two dimensional map; up, down, right, left? Someday-”

“Quintura, Grandpa, has tag clouds that shift as you explore. And KartOO has two-dimensional maps. It’s been done.”

Grandpa’s face flushed ever so slightly.

“Yes, but in the future, you won’t just look up a movie or a song by its name, the search engine itself will recommend a title to you - just like a human!”

“You mean just like Seeqpod, or LivePlasma?”

“Who are they? Punk rock bands?”

“No, Grandpa, they’re alternative search engines.”

“Well, I never heard of them.”

“Obviously,” grandson whispered under his breath.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Look young man, I’ve been around a lot longer than you.  Why, when I was your age, Google was nothing but a white screen with a search box and a list of ten text snippets!  And now it’s a white page,” he paused, “uh, a white page with a search box, and uh, a list of ten….well…you know what I mean.”

“Listen, my boy, right now you search for a song and when you find it, you think that’s pretty neat. I’m telling you that in three to five years, you’ll be able to search for a word in that song, or any song - without tags!” Grandpa closed his book with one hand.

“You mean like pluggd can do now, or FindSounds?”

“Well, um, forget that. These search engines of the future will able to actually “see” objects within a picture; why, they could look through your Momma’s (digital) photos and find the ones with me in them! Of course that’s 3-5 years away, but..”

“You mean like PolarRose is working on now? I just installed it yesterday; it’s cool, Grandpa.”

“But what if you could see inside a search engine, how it works, instead of just getting the results like gum balls from a gum ball machine?”

“You mean like dialogus?”

Grandpa’s eyes were starting to glaze over.

“Or a search engine that talked you; spoke to you! Wouldn’t that be something?”

“Like the Accoona talking toolbar, or Speegle, that reads all of the results to you?”

“Now listen, Billy, you won’t just get results, you’ll be able to vote on them too! Why, you’ll be able to influence the search engine! Imagine that!”

“You mean like AfterVote, or Sproose, or…”

Grandpa’s eyes focused again. He stared hard at Billy. “Young man, where are you getting these crazy ideas? I may look old to you, but I use the major search engines every day, and I know what they can do.”

“It’s a new blog, Grandpa, AltSearchEngines; they have hundreds of new search engines.”

“Well I’ve never heard about it. Alright, smarty, what about contextual search; launching a search engine from within another application?”

“You mean the way Answer.com’s Answer tips let you search for any term within the document you’re reading?”

“What about automatically categorizing the search results, instead of just a long list?”

“Like Kosmix?”

Grandpa was silent. He slumped in his chair. He looked older.

“Listen,” he said, “you look tired. Why don’t I come back tomorrow?”

“But Grandpa,” Billy protested, “we still haven’t talked about Semantic Search yet!”

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Guest Authors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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