Building A Better Search

Image: nicoleleec via flickr

Do you sit around wondering how to make the internet a better place to get things done? What about how to find legit, credible sources? Now, what about how to help us all feel just a little bit more human when we're online? An article written in this month's issue of The Atlantic implies that more and more of the "research" we're doing on the web is gearing us towards crowd-sourced solutions to everyday problems and likewise towards media that is entertainment-driven. The result of this scenario is one in which data-driven reporting, as one might traditionally define it, is being pushed out by up-to-the-minute sensational journalism. We've seen it, says Atlantic author Fallows, with the now widespread Gawker. We've also seen it with the rise of services such as social plugins and the ever trendier term "realtime search." But what happens when what we really want to know isn't the most popular search term, or for that matter the most "frequently recommended" solution? What if we want a more intuitive search? This is where realtime, crowdsourced solutions fall to the wayside and the current moanings of academics begin to make a bit of sense.

Well, I for one would like to make the web simultaneously more useful, more collaborative, and less obtusely-driven by a set of organizations whose main objective is sales, especially at the expense of true (albeit sometimes unpopular) journalism. In such a vein, this blogpost recently featured by PSFK (a personal fave) presents a rather amusing set of rumblings on the topic...

Science has a very vigorous process for moving the scientific understanding of an issue forward, and a key component of that process is the peer reviewed paper. A peer reviewed paper is, in simplest terms, a paper that has undergone the scrutiny of other scientists to insure that nothing in there is opinion or conjecture and that all conclusions are supported by the facts. It's an anonymous and brutal process, and it's often criticized because it means that science moves at an overly sluggish and methodical pace. But it wasn't developed for speed. It was developed so that our understanding of the world can build upon a sound foundation of what has come before.

When you search a topic like "the best coffee in America" the results can come back with a zillion equal opinions, and it won't mean that you now have a distorted world view. But if you search "gravitational effects" it would be helpful to have a way to separate the science from the chaff.

This piece raises some very, let me repeat very, important issues related to the forward motion of the internet. The problem that faces content managers today is less "what's newsworthy" than it is "what is science and what is chaff," or more pointedly "what matters?" How might we shape the web so that it points us towards the most useful resources rather than just those that consistently make headlines? If predictive analytics don't do the trick, is there another way? If so, what might that solution look like?