Looking to the Future
This is part 7 of a 7 article series that examines the technological history and theory behind the curation of human thought and discovery.
The world has changed. Efforts over countless millennia have given rise to advancements in human technology and understanding that have shaped how we live, work, and play.
Curation has been no exception. In fact, much of the world we know today would have been impossible without curation. Research would stall, innovation would slow to a crawl, and confusion would carry the day.
Fortunately, curation has not only been a constant throughout our evolution but it has also expanded and improved over the years with amazing results. With the rise of the Web, It might seem as if we’ve reached the very pinnacle of preserving human thought, but developments in curation efforts are showing no signs of slowing down.
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you have reliable access to the Web. This is not the case for the majority of the world (as of April 2016 that number is as high as 60%). This presents both a tremendous opportunity and a challenge. Valuable knowledge held today within unconnected communities across the globe could be made accessible by bringing these communities online and ensuring their history, culture, and ideas can be preserved for all time. The challenge is in curating that information in a way that is sensitive to the needs and cultures of those communities that have yet to be connected.
Some of these people have never seen a computer, let alone a camera or even a book. The way a people curate is as much a reflection of their values and beliefs as it is a matter of practicality. Digital curation may be optimal at preserving information, but it comes at the cost of changing habits and practices that may hold a deeper meaning for some. The decision to participate in building a digital library of human ideas is one that must be made by those that possess the ideas, but the first step towards increasing participation requires access to the right tools.
While the Web and personal computers may still be out of reach for many, smartphones and cheap tablets are serving as a bridge to the Internet and new curation technologies for many of the uninitiated. These powerful tools will open the Web to many and undoubtedly usher in an age of increased collaboration and curation online.
But this digital transition isn’t limited to other humans that have yet to get online, even the already connected world has work to do digitizing information put down before the birth of the Internet. Innumerable books, papers, and recordings sit in libraries and archives gathering dust and slowly decaying to the point of uselessness. Fortunately, many have risen to the occasion and are working tirelessly to save what they can before it’s lost to time. The Google Books Library Project is one example. Working with institutions around the world, Google is digitizing rare and out of print texts. Ongoing efforts like this will only become more necessary as time marches on.
While we work to connect the unconnected and race against the clock to salvage the curation efforts of the past, we also find ourselves having to contend with the problem of too much information.
In a somewhat ironic turn of events, we have curated so much knowledge for future use that it has become difficult to effectively make use of it. Much like the problems early web portals faced by having to organize an Internet of websites growing too fast for human indexing, information databases face the challenge of figuring out what information is relevant to an individual’s query when there are so many answers to choose from.
Queries for restaurant and book ideas are regularly met with pages and pages of recommendations and reviews. Even Wikipedia pages suffer from conflicting pieces of information on a single topic due to a high influx of contributors with differing opinions and interests. There is much debate as to whether more restrictive or permissive structures around the input and output of curated information should be built to solve this. How much control should a computer algorithm have over what information It displays? Should information be more limited to the requester’s interests or is it better to provide insights that might be uncomfortable for some people to process?
Even more important is how search engines and collaborative databases may have to evolve from the currently popular ad-based business model. The model that has been the standard for online search (in its many forms) for decades. In some instances, this deluge of information has been a boon to the bottom line of these companies. So much more information to sift through means more page views which translate into more ad views and more revenue. While this has led to an undesirable experience for most users, the amount of information online has not yet made this experience intolerable for the majority. Unfortunately, the growth of curated information online will outlast the patience of that majority in time.
What the future business model may look like that will enable collaborative databases and search engines to provide a better solution to information access is anyone’s guess, but the way we search for and find information in the future will change.
In many ways, apps are looking like the future of the Web. Their synergy with smartphones cannot be ignored. They enable better curation than with just the standard capabilities built into the average phone. Without a doubt, this has been instrumental in collecting information, photos, and footage that might normally have never been saved for posterity. But for all the success apps have enjoyed, they continue to serve as an obstacle for accessible digitally curated content.
Many apps still have much of their data accessible on the Web today. Unfortunately, this may have more to do with a desire to capture users that have yet to transition off of personal computers to smartphones. As smartphone adoption rates rise and apps become the norm, the possibility of a world of disconnected databases of information heavily guarded by their owners in order to retain users is very real. Search engines are already having a hard (if not impossible time) indexing content found on apps. Should things become even more closed off, the future of accessible curated information could be put in jeopardy.
Apps (as we think of them today) are still a new phenomenon. As they mature in the future there is no telling what they will look like and how their information will be made accessible. We may very well find ourselves searching through apps like we search the Web with Google in the next decade.
But even how we search is changing. From the command line to the search box, we have explored the vast digital library that is the Web through typing. Advancements in voice recognition technology gave us speech-to-text and opened up search accessibility even more. It also helped enable what may be the next step in the evolution of how we search. Developments in speech-to-text and natural language processing allowed us to pose questions as we would to another human being. The only problem was that we were talking to a computer that didn’t quite understand us like another human being could.
Artificial intelligence (A.I.) promises to solve this. Programs like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and IBM’s Watson are changing how many people search for information and get things done. The technology is imperfect but it’s advancing quickly. Today, You can ask Siri a question as you would another person and get a clear and coherent answer (for most queries). Yes, the results might not always match what you’re looking for and there are plenty of things Siri will get confused by, but it’s a sign of things to come.
Future A.I. offerings have the potential to open up search to those that may have trouble with the text-dependent methods of today or help guide us to information we’re looking for even when we can’t quite formulate the right words needed to ask the question correctly. It can predict what we need by getting to know us and help build a relationship that can go a long way in trusting the results and recommendations we receive. It may even be the solution to how we will find what we seek across the apps on our devices. The technology is still in its early stages but when (and if) it gets to where it plans on going the world will never be the same.
A.I. isn’t the only new technology that will impact accessibility to curated knowledge. Virtual reality (VR) headsets and devices also hold great potential. Combined with 360-degree recording tools, VR has taken the powerful curation mediums of photography and film and added immersion to the mix. News organizations and content creators are already taking advantage of this. Opportunities to look around the scene of a recorded major event expands on the context film gave to photos. Now, you aren’t limited to just what the camera was focused on. You can look in all directions and see what else was going on to get a better sense of the story.
VR can take this even further. Its ability to fully surround the viewer’s visual senses can give them a better view of what their looking at. In addition, adding movement capabilities beyond the fixed position of most 360 degree cameras could allow for levels of exploration around a recorded moment in time as if the viewer was actually there. The possibilities presented by VR (and augmented reality as well) could drastically improve the quality and usefulness of our curated knowledge. A lot more progress must be made before VR can reach its full potential but the benefits for humanity will be great should it prove successful.
Human history is a story of survival. The preservation of life, culture, and knowledge has been vital in ensuring our continued existence as a species. From rudimentary markings on cave walls to lifelike artificial intelligence, curation has been the driving force in the advancements of humankind.
Sir Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” A nod to the discoveries of the past which gave him the knowledge to develop innovations in mathematics and physics that are responsible for some of the greatest technological achievements of our time. While there can be no doubt Newton’s intellect deserves much of the credit for putting the pieces together, it was curation that left those pieces in place for him to pick up.
Throughout this series, we have explored the past and present and even peered into the future, but nothing is for certain and what may become of the methods used to document the human experience still remains to be written.
But no matter what happens, in one form or another, humans will do what they have done since time immemorial:
They will curate.
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