Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | C | Computers in Libraries

The future of federated search, or what will the world look like in 10 years.

Article Excerpt
In 10 years, federated search--or search of any kind for that matter--won't exist.

What? Heresy, you say! Let me elaborate. The function of search will exist--but not in a context with which any of us is familiar today. After all, "search" only exists because we don't have the information we need or want at our fingertips in the first place. As a function, it's really extraneous to our needs, and it will disappear as a dedicated action because it's really part of something else.

If this sounds heretical, let's look at calendar software. Ten years ago, OnTime was the dominant calendar software provider, and Outlook didn't even exist in the form we know it. Today, the notion of "calendaring" is an integral part of our interconnected, Wi-Fi/web-enabled, mobile-synced environment in ways we could hardly imagine in 1998. In 1998, it was virtually impossible to have a calendar integrated into our email function and seamlessly synced to a hand-held phone in our pocket. In fact, most of us carried separate cell phones and PDAs in 1998--and even those PDAs' calendars didn't correlate to our desktops.

So if "search" doesn't exist in 2018, how will we find the information that we need across vast volumes of information and disparate silos or datastores? Digitally stored information is increasing--dramatically--and there's nothing to indicate that trend won't...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!