1.20.2010

Bing! Search Overload

Am I the only one who's mildly disconcerted by the ads for Microsoft's new 'smarter' search engine, Bing? You know, the ones where people have suffered from such a surfeit of information that they need a search engine to parse out what they do and don't need?

Google, perhaps I have misjudged your potential to develop into Skynet.

But, honestly, computers can deal with information way better than people can. Despite the millennia we've had to evolve our brains into better receptacles for data and their processing, we still have upper capacities, and the limitation on things like reading speed and even the ability of our eyes to stare at screens for long hours means that, in the end, it might be better if we relegate the mere sorting to computers, and save for ourselves the more intelligent and creatively demanding task of analysis. (Maybe I'm being a little too sanguine about the intelligence demanded by analysis?)


In other news...so evidently Guatemala and El Salvador recently had a 6.0 magnitude earthquake (something like that, what, am I supposed to do my own fact-checking now?). Note that there's no call for aid or reports of mass deaths, which with the latest quake-worthy aftershock in Haiti has just gotten even worse...why? Is this the difference between relative levels of poverty, localization of quakes, early warnings, etc.?

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