JG etc.

Eric Schmidt from Google’s Press Day:

It’s possible that because of the success of search and these wiki type structures and so forth that experts and particularly expertise will transition in our lifetime from learned information to learning information. And curiosity will be how you establish your expertise. This is a big shift, for the learning and information structures of our world.

I was thinking that I have noticed how my cognitive recognition/recall has changed in the last three years. The way I create shortcuts in my head is totally different than it use to be. I remember items in the context of how I can find them either online or in spotlight on my mac. It is all about that meta-data, and it extends further. If I meet someone at a conference, instead of trying to remember a name, title, and the company of a person. It can be as little as remeber the context of the situation I met them in. IE: Vendor at AdTech. Try to just remember company, look up directory of companies at Adtech, go the companies site, look at the about. If name but no email is provided, search: name + email. Tag the result in del.ici.ous and the search is cached as well. Another example was last night I was at a house that wasn’t allowing me send out email. I remembered that because AT&T sucks, they don’t always allow you to send mail out of port 25. I couldn’t remember what port I needed to send out the mail from but it was just a simple search: trouble sending mail SBC internet connection. Boom, first result, port 587.

The ability to quickly search data allows us to no longer have to fill our brains with unnecessary information. Goes along with the whole Einstein: “Don’t remember anything that can be easily looked up.” That statement takes on new meaning in the 21st century.

I really like this summation of what Schmidt was saying:

Schmidt said Google appears to be benefiting from a “limitless growth model” that shows no signs of ending.

Sort of sounds like my post in which I said Google’s ad model is, well, ‘limitless’:

How big is that business model? It is undefinable($^n), it is crazy, but so far it is working.