We are in the middle of an expansion of information access, with the internet providing democratic access to billions of pages of text. Most of this is mediated by search engines. The only other comparable expansion started in 1456, with the introduction of the printing press. Fifty years and 15 million books later, the theologian Sebastian Brant wrote 鈥淭here is nothing nowadays that our children鈥� fail to know.鈥�
Today, 12 years into the era of search engines, we still have not made good on Brant鈥檚 boast. Search engines deliver relevance but knowledge requires human work.
In 50 years the scene will be transformed. Instead of typing a few words into a search engine, people will discuss their needs with a digital intermediary, which will offer suggestions and refinements. The result will not be a list of links, but an annotated report (or a simple conversation) that synthesises the important points, with references to the original literature. People won鈥檛 think of 鈥渟earch鈥� as a separate category 鈥� it will all be part of living.
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