Technology & Innovation — February 1, 2011

Jaron Lanier: “Friction-Free” Is the Problem With Search Quality

Any actions associated with zero costs tend to become debased over time, says technologist Jaron Lanier. Search is no different.

bigthinkeditor

In part 3 of Big Think’s Farsight 2011 event, Jaron Lanier discusses the trouble with un-monetized services on the web. Search’s spam problem may be solved by attaching a small micro-payment to every one of our searches. “Is paid search comprising the value of search,” asks Big Think emcee Vivek Wadhwa. “I would happily pay Google or Bing 20 or 40 bucks a year for search,” says Lanier.

Later, Esther Dyson took the stage and claimed the future of search will be about verbs, as Bill Gates once told her over dinner. We will want to ask search engines for solutions as to how to do things, rather simply for information. Following Dyson, Di-Ann Eisnor, VP and Community Geographer of the search application Waze, showed off Waze’s ability to crowdsource, in real-time, information for traffic directions.

Finally, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Architect of Bing Maps, summed up the troubles for search presented by our shift from largely using PCs to mobile devices.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

Up Next

Guest Thinkers

Is Bing Copying Google’s Search Results? Is Google Making Billions on Spam?

In part 2 of Big Think’s Farsight 2011 event Principal Engineer at Google, Matt Cutts and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Dr. Harry Shum bump heads.