When Search Engines are gone: FinderAgents
Today’s search engines do a good job organizing the billions of web pages published on the Internet. However, they are limited to the a single algorithm used for every user of their system. And the order in which search engines provide information is mostly determined by ‘popular vote’ (how many links point to a page). This creates a system in which the most popular seemingly equates to the most relevant result, while ignoring other valueable factors, such as source, timeliness and most of all user specific criteria. All of which currently do not – or barely – find a way into data organization by search engines.
The most important criteria of any (Internet (Re-)) Search however is the user and his or her knowledge, history, preferences and any other criteria inherent in any human being. What is called for therefore is not an adaption of search to the masses but an adaption of a search tool to its user.
Search engines will hardly be able to deliver that level of sophistication needed to fulfill these criteria. A paradigm shift is needed. This new paradigm could be in form of FinderAgents which could become the electronic representation of a user fulfilling his request (searches) and his/her behalf with his/her knowledge, preferences and anything else the user would like it to consider.
IÂ had the intention of calling this new system ‘user agents’ but unfortunately this term is being used for a lot of things that are really not related to what I envision. So for the time being I will call it Agratar as a word play of Avatar, a users (graphical) representation in the online world.
Work in progress ..
