Search, Stefan Weitz
Search, Stefan Weitz
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Search
How the Data Explosion Makes Us Smarter

Author: Stefan Weitz

Narrator: Dana Hickox

Unabridged: 6 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 11/01/2014

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

Search is as old as language. There has always been a need for one to find something in the jumble of human creation. The first web was nothing more than passing verbal histories down the generations so others could find and remember how not to get eaten; the first search used the power of written language to build simple indexes in printed books, leading to the Dewey Decimal system and reverse indices in more modern times.

Then digital happened. Besides having profound societal impacts, it also made the act of searching almost impossibly complex for both engines and searchers. Information isn't just words; it is pictures, videos, thoughts tagged with geocode data, routes, physical world data, and, increasingly, the machines themselves reporting their condition and listening to others.

Search: How the Data Explosion Makes Us Smarter holds up a mirror to our time to see if search can keep up. Author Stefan Weitz, a Director in Search for Bing (Microsoft), explores the idea of access to help readers understand how we are inventing new ways to access data through devices in more places and with more capabilities. We are at the cusp of imbuing our generation with superpowers, but only if we fundamentally rethink what search is, how people can use it, and what we should demand of it.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Chris

This was just 'ok', a very simplistic overview of "search" (which verges more on techno-Utopian) and it’s potential to revolutionize quality of life by helping to predict/anticipate user-needs and to better grasp context-dependent requests, so it can link up with other automated services to provide......more

Goodreads review by Tabby

Repetitive......more

Goodreads review by Tyler

Read this over Thanksgiving and after suffering through a pretty elementary chapter one, the subsequent chapters have me thinking about all kinds of terms and possibilities. For instance, what is it called when a computer is able to understand what you mean versus what you say (i.e. how can it transl......more