The Funnel and the Spray

This has been one of those low level thoughts that bobs up from the neural surface (the Little Limited Machine in my skull). The bemoaning of web search devolving from the list of ranked blue links to something that zeroes on on what some machine language thing suggest. And what gets portrayed in the Everything Painted With AI future is all our interaction is putting questions in a chat box (or mumbling them into a phone). When Google was sharing their “idea” for what search would be,m it seemed solely focused on returning answers. The idea of search being a funnel, just narrowing it down to a packaged “answer.” Search as a funnel. And yes, very often I am seeking a very specific answer. The lyrics of a sing. The name of the inventor of something. But more often that not, even when I am looking for something specific, I like to keep my eyes tuned widely for the tangents, what was it once called, the “Adjacent Possible”, the interesting links to take me off to the internet rabbit…