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Search & Society: A Fundamental Shift
It seems ever so simple when we arrive at the search engine window, a blank spot where we enter some text and get results. Google mastered this simple yet incredibly complex feat. So much so that all the other search engines followed this premise. It became seemingly simple across all our devices. How we search however, is about to undergo some fundamental changes.
This isn’t about a battle for search engine dominance, well, it is in one aspect, but about how we interact with our digital world and the impact it has on our physical world. It is a signal of how our digital and physical worlds are becoming increasingly intertwined. And co-dependent. It underscores our sociocultural relationship with digital technologies.
As we integrate more information technologies into our world, our lumpy organic brains are going to need a lot of support, and while search engines were crucial to the success of the early internet, they will be but one part of how we will need to search in the coming decades as our digital and physical worlds merge evermore.
Why is searching so important to humans?
Searching is something our brains are always doing. Even while we sleep. When we wake up, the very first thing we do is search. The room around us, to verify or evaluate where we are. We still look…
