In the early days, adventures in search required vertical integration and an entrepreneurial spirit. During the 1960s, pioneers of the first information retrieval networks couldn't rely on existing infrastructure—they had to design the whole system. Hardware, software, networks, protocols, algorithms, content and metadata creation, user training, and billing were part and parcel of the job. In contrast, today we enjoy a robust infrastructure that affords specialization. Modern search tools and technologies allow us to concentrate on customization. Unfortunately, they also let us be lazy. It's all too easy to focus on interface design without challenging our creativity by reimagining content and context.
That's why the biggest innovations in search come from outside the category. Wikipedia serves as a case in point. By reinventing the encyclopedia as a collaborative work, Jimmy Wales made a huge improvement to search. While Google is the means, Wikipedia is the end. We Google to find the Wikipedia article. It's inevitably at the top of results. The cocreators of Wikipedia invest time in writing and editing because they know their articles will be found via Google. Wikipedia is a tool that embodies process and incentives. It motivates millions of users to become creators of content and metadata, in part by sharing its analytics in detail. In addition to overall statistics, we can see data about each article, user, and creator. This transparency is conducive to widely distributed competition and collaboration. It's a success story in which knowledge management and search combine to foster a participation economy where the reward is recognition. It's also a repeatable solution to a common problem. This social design pattern, which enlists users as cocreators and coorganizers, has been copied liberally by entrepreneurs under the banner of Web 2.0. And while they may have already grabbed the low-hanging fruit, it's a really big tree that has much to offer search.
Designers of search applications must no longer accept content in its current state. It's time to shake the tree. Questions we should ask include:
Who are the current (and potential) creators of content?
How can we motivate them to improve quality and quantity?
What tools and processes will make publishing faster and easier?
How can we enlist users in content creation and organization?
How can we share analytics to inspire both use and cocreation?
Search is social. This realization invites us to think, not only about information and technology, but also about people. Of course, we shouldn't stop there. It's a mistake to believe the source of all creation is human. Sensors are creators, too. Increasingly, networks of sensors allow us to query temperature, pollution, traffic density, and product availability. Our mobile devices know their own locations, which changes how we search and how we are found. How can we improve the quality and quantity of content and metadata to advance user and business goals as they relate to search and discovery? Who (and what) are all the potential creators? These are the questions we ask when we see that knowledge management is part of search. And, upon finding we're engaged in the holistic design of complex adaptive systems, we understand that we need a new map.