Many people consider the idea of computers communicating fluently with humans to be science fiction, but a large number of scientists and researchers see it as a soon-to-be reality instead. Looking back at the past century of technological innovation, it is obvious that society has come quite far in a short amount of time in regard to complexity of thought and the accessibility of information that students now enjoy. In the most recent decade, search engines like Google and Bing have been at the forefront of establishing and improving the human-computer information stream, allowing users from all over the world to share knowledge with one another in order to improve their educations. For instance, although search engines have been thus far confined to the random surfer model that calculates the probability of any one user clicking a link to a particular page, called PageRank, researchers are continuing to imagine and engineer new search strategies, and there is only a matter of time before the internet diverges from this aging search model. These search engines are not only being used in a surprising variety of ways but are now experimenting with new systems and techniques for data processing and retrieval that incorporate speech and thought in order to integrate man and machine for a more productive future.
Researchers and students in a variety of fields are especially well-poised to understand the potential impacts these new systems will have on the way society thinks and learns, many having benefited from these advances already. Instead of compiling long, detailed corpuses of words and expressions from physical documents as they have in the past, for instance, linguistic researchers are now running their data-analysis queries through platforms such as Google Books in order to more naturally determine such factors as common word and phrase usage as well as frequency of alternate spellings and grammar. Within the next five years, it would be no surprise to see most search platforms converting speech into search terms. To be sure, some platforms have already begun to do so, such as Apple’s Siri, which interprets speech as text for the iPhone’s search engine to use in information retrieval, then translating the most likely results from text to speech. Eventually, linguists can look forward to analyzing whole new corpuses of actual speech due to these processes, and everyone will be enjoying hands-free access to information as they go along with their daily lives.
While Google has been a major innovator in the past when it comes to designing the best search engine, a new competitor has emerged in Microsoft’s newest search engine, called Bing. Instead of simply ranking the most popular websites in relation to users’ search terms like Google does, Bing attempts to read its users minds, mimicking such mental processes as free association and bridging the gaps between misidentifications and their targeted meanings. Because the platform is so new, however, Bing sometimes misfires or over-predicts users’ intentions. For example, when a user enters the search term “face,” Bing assumes that he or she is offering an incomplete search term associated with “Facebook,” and its first two links lead to the social network, while a Google search of the same term produces a results page that is more diverse. Obviously, the more search terms are included in a query, the more focused and accurate the results become for each of these engines, but they have yet to be able to truly predict human thoughts and intentions. Nonetheless, these developments are a step in the right direction—in a few more years, search engines will likely 
grow more and more reliable in determining the intentions behind users’ search terms. In order to achieve this progress, innovators have already begun to identify a whole array of factors that may be used, including such intriguing concepts as tracking the past queries of a user and comparing them with search terms as they are entered as well as sci-fi-like face recognition software that can detect emotions and tailor results, and also advertisements, accordingly.
If many people in modern society take for granted the current level of the integration of information between humans and computers, the same people probably will continue to underestimate the significance of the multitude of advances to come to this field in the next several years. These advances will be indicative of the advance of civilization, freeing the human mind to reason at a higher level and to spend more time learning what to ask, instead of how to ask, concerning anything from a calculus problem to society’s most pressing questions. In the coming technological era, students will outperform their computers instead of the other way around, and internet search engines will provide society with the tools to do so.
Alex Petrovic – Brisbane, Australia. Dejan SEO Pty Ltd (more info) is a team of talented consultants and link builders. The company combines many years of experience in search engine optimisation and internet marketing among its consultants to provide clients with tangible results. Dejan’s 42-member SEO staff have skills and proven records in all areas of search engine optimisation including keyword targeting, competitor research, on-site optimisation, and link popularity.
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