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Virtual Categories

The current development of search technology is demonstrating a much greater awareness of intelligence and meaning in information than we have had before. As chaos theory has taught us, the multiplication of virtually (and perhaps literally) any set of data along enough iterations will render certain patterns visible, and there are even patterns to the patterns.

What the algorithm developers at Google are only beginning to understand is that certain sets of rules can effectively lead users through the pathways of these basically natural patterns, which are discovered best by observation, experience and long thought. In so doing, they have developed a search technology that is so effective that it manages to help billions of users sort through the single largest collection of data in human history without the use of category, hierarchy, geography, or chronology.

These are, by the way, the five techniques posed by Richard Wurman as the principle means by which humans order information (the other was alphabetization, which to me seems fundamentally the same as chronology... what I call 'chronology' was separated by Wurman into “time” and “alphabetization.”)

But of these techniques, where does Google fall? Clearly, none of these terms even come close to describing what Google does.

How might one describe Google's technique? Matching? A variable weighting system? A highly accelarated system of trial and error? It is difficult to classify for the same reason, I would venture to guess, that Wurman did not think to include it. The fact is, what Google is doing is a very new thing, because it is operating in an environment with which we still have little experience. Put simply, the dynamic rather than the static.

Of all of the techniques mentioned by Wurman all but “time” are basically static in human terms, and this only because time itself is always in motion. Categories have traditionally sliced through data, whereas Google literally “crawls” its way around it. The data is completely without a static state. It has no structure to speak of. No doubt the pages indexed by Google are entered into their own database in some kind of chronological order, but this is at most a key field, basically an index of the physical location of the data on the hardware. As far as any user is concerned, all of the pages are laid out at random, as all of the pages of a thousand encyclopedias placed upon a surface as large as the moon.

What is returned, after entering any term of their spontaneous choosing into a blank search box, is a work of magic—a rabbit pulled from a hat. It is based upon the idea of letting the information order itself. Information is, after all, a product of human intelligence. This means that the seed of intelligence is contained within all information. Intelligence is dynamic, and so should be the pathways used to find the information it generates.

While Google has delievered incredible “results” in a couple of senses, I believe the technique will reach its upper limit fairly soon. They can only keep modifying the search algorithm so long. As information continues to explode (many new sites created every day, very few deleted) so will Google's infrastructure begin to experience stress. It will need to find another way to break the information down. But moving only forward! Attempts to slice the information up again into static divisions declared from above will fail, if they are ever made. They will either be too broad to have any meaning, or so narrow as to accelarate a “stupidification” process.

There is order to the information that is more than just pulling a new rabbit out of the same hat every time. But the nature of that order changes for every person on every day. There are categories, hierarchies, geographies and chronologies which make perfect sense for most all of the data indexed by Google. But they will never be the same for every person. I believe Google will (and if they do not, some one else will) find a clean method by which to combine categorization with dynamic search results. But the categories will be dynamic, not static. They will not simply change according to the needs of a given situation—the situation itself will create them.

Categories will appear in the the same way that pages currently appear—on the fly, as though pulled out of a hat. But unlike a page result—which is basically an endpoint, and either is or is not what you were looking for—the dynamic, or virtual categories will be forks in the road. They will appear depending upon the general direction you are headed, as well as what surrounds you at a given point in time. (always up to date) Most importantly, they will be circular rather hierarchical. They will be true pathways, making a full circle possible.