Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Another Step Toward Universal Search: Google’s Cultural Institute

From “Quietly, Google Puts History Online” (The Times):
The digitization of the [Dead Sea Scrolls] was done by Google under a new initiative aimed at demonstrating that the Internet giant’s understanding of culture extends beyond the corporate kind. The Google Cultural Institute plans to make artifacts like the scrolls — from museums, archives, universities and other collections around the world — accessible to any Internet user.
See how this initiative fits within Google’s vision of search: “The Evolution of Search” (YouTube).

Next, they need to figure out how to introduce humor into the discovery process. See “Why Our Brains Make Us Laugh” (The Boston Globe):
our brains make sense of our daily lives via a never ending series of assumptions, based on sparse, incomplete information. All these best guesses simplify our world, give us critical insights into the minds of others, and streamline our decisions. But mistakes are inevitable, and even a small faulty assumption can open the door to bigger and costlier mistakes. …
Mirth is agnostic of the content, because it’s just the reward for the discovery of a false assumption.