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“Sci-Fi” search begets sci-fi search
December 14th, 2009 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&q=sci-fi&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10 Is this old news? While looking for sci-fi news to talk about here, I searched for “sci-fi” at Google and got the above. It’s search results, except there’s a little live Twitter ticker that refreshes all mentions of sci-fi once every couple of seconds. If I remove any of the arguments, it doesn’t appear. I’m not even sure you’ll see it if you hit the link (what happens if you’re using IE and you request “client=firefox-a” ?). Now imagine Google being able to live-refresh its own search index for all web pages, not just something unified and (relatively) small like Twitter. Are we close to that? Will humans need to know anything for themselves besides how to use these ubiquitous, mind-replacing tools? I don’t worry about knowing the capitol of Paraguay because I know Wikipedia will know it for me if I need it. So I don’t bother looking. I’m made uncurious because in a way, I know it — just in a more roundabout way than holding that datum in my brain. Discussion (18)¬ |
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In Canada we get the privilege of not getting that, because we are redirected to google.ca which has none of the improvements. Fun!
Actually, even when I force it to use google.com I still don't get a twitter feed.
I prefer to imagine that it'll be a net positive. It might allow us to become better at using facts, rather than remembering them.
There'll be downsides when we don't have access to the data, but we'll learn to adapt. I know that whenever I forget an anniversary I'm going to blame technology.
And hey, maybe we'll unlock powerful mental abilities by freeing our minds of the trivial — in fact, I think it would be stupid NOT to predict that every American child will have ESP by 2020.
… 2020 Vision is copyright me.
Actually, a few months ago I read an article in Discover Magazine about the idea of an "extended mind," which is pretty much exactly what you're talking about here.
It's about how searching for information stored outside of the mind, (either by looking up something written down or using a search engine,) versus drawing on information stored in your brain just changes the source, not the process. And about how the mind isn't isolated, but actually a mix of your brain and your environment.
And… I cant remember the details. But here, I looked it up for you: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb/15-how-googl…
Not this idea x.x And citing WIkipedia of all things as the shining example of brain-replacement! I wouldn't have expected to stumble across it here. If a stray squirrel at the local power substation can take out your "memory" then it's not memory.
Double Bingo.
It's what google is calling live search and was released recently (last week). Meh by me since I don't use those services.
I just played around with this for a bit and discovered that if you put a hyphen after the first letter of any word, the Twicker pops up
The first time I clicked on your link (using Firefox) I got a regular old Google search. A few hours later, I refreshed Starslip, and clicked again. Now there is a Twitter feed amongst the results. I suppose that would be nice if I cared what people on Twitter posted that had "Sci-fi" in it.
For example: "All I want for Christmas is a nice guy who's 30/40ish, single, educated, nice, sci fi geek, smart, funny, is cute & likes ME!!" That was probably the most useful part of my day. Also useful if you happen to be unsure of your evening television viewing: "Tonight's 1 vs 100 is Big Time Geeks, Video Games and Sci Fi!! WEEEEE" Thank you, Google and Twitter.
"I don’t worry about knowing the capitol of Paraguay because I know Wikipedia will know it for me if I need it. So I don’t bother looking."
I suppose knowing the capital of Paraguay would be nice, if you wanted to impress people with your geographic knowledge. However, if that knowledge isn't of much use to you in your daily life, it isn't necessary for it to take up brain space. I'm not sure as to why you become more "uncurious" though; I was very curious as to Paraguay's capital, and looked it up (Asunción, by the way). Will I remember that in a day, a week, a year? No, but I'm ok with that, because unless I want to impress my friends, I don't need to. And it will indeed be available anytime I DO need it, or just become idly curious. I strongly suspect that I would not have memorized Paraguay's capital in the time before Wikipedia; after all, my house does have a globe and various atlases or maps in it, and I can just as well look cities up on them as I can on Wikipedia.
I constantly worry that the Internet is making me stupid…but that comes as a function of information overload as opposed to "here, we'll store that for you, no need to know it for yourself." I learn so many little tidbits here and there they all drop out the sieve en masse.
There's a sci-fi story about this… Which I read many many years ago, and therefore don't know the author or title of… in which some future man makes the amazing discovery that every time he types "2 + 2" into his calculator it comes up 4. EVERY TIME!!! Amazing! And so he posits that it is possible to ACTUALLY DO MATHEMATICAL EQUATIONS WITHOUT A CALCULATOR! It was pretty funny.
The book you're looking for is called Accelerando, by Charles Stross.
Toby, are you perhaps remembering "The Feeling Of Power" by Isaac Asimov?
http://downlode.org/Etext/power.html
I just checked Wikipedia and the capital of Paraguay is balls balls balls balls balls jeremy is a fag
So now you know
Hey, "Never commit to memory anything you can easily look up." –Albert Einstein
Our minds could eventually follow a model similar to data storage right now on computers. Computers basically have several layers of storage, which roughly break down to:
1) Registers
2) CPU Cache
3) RAM
4) Hard Disk
5) Network
Each layer is much larger but also much slower than the one above it. Thus, when you're writing programs, you consider which data is important enough to get promoted to a faster tier. "Caching" nearly always refers to the practice of keeping data in RAM to speed access to it (as compared to pulling it from disk).
It's not unreasonable to think that we'd adopt a similar approach for our own memory. Life critical concepts like breathing speech are subconscious. Important day to day data like names of family members or how to do repeated tasks at work are stored in our actual memory for fast access. Access to less important, but still relevant data is streamlined through services like wikipedia. Finally, rare or unimportant data is left to be found via search.
"Now imagine Google being able to live-refresh its own search index for all web pages"
It looks to me that that's pretty much what they're doing:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nexus+one
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nexus+one&hl…
Ok, that first link doesn't seem to work – but the second link is directly to the "Latest results" page.