Subtitle: how Google and its rivals rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture
John BATTELLE call no. 306.406 BAT
I wanted to read the Google story especially about their business model and found this book instead. It, the author says, is not about the business end of searching, but the act of searching and how that has been transformed by google.
The author is a founder of Wired magazine so he may know what he is talking about. Still reading.
29 June 2007
Turned out to be a pretty good book afterall. I tend to forget the early days of the internet when there was no such thing as a search button. Now it's one of the necessities of life. And this is what the book is about... how Search for information has become part and parcel of our lives, and how it will or may dictate how we live our lives. Google's business model is paid Search.... us searchers don't pay of course, but advertisers do. And although it maintains that its Search results are independent of advertisement, one has to suspect. And its algorithm has the ability to have a very long tail, remembering things you look for and linking to other areas. This is itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Let me explain:
Battelle talks about Search and Immortality - through a track of clickstreams (roughly translated into a person's search history) - the information from one person's search can lead to another, thus building leaf upon leaf into a giant, subject-specific database. Already this is kinda happening with Mozilla's history page. Imagine the time saved if you could go through the search history of someone else before you who had searched the web for a similar subject.
Google and other competitors have only touched about 6% of the information out there in the web. The future is scary but tempting.
Battelle has a website. http://battellemedia.com/
A bit of trivia: Google's Page Rank algorithm, the very basis of its search tool is a patent held by Stanford University because Larry Page and Brin were grad students working the algorithm in the dorm rooms of Stanford. They license Page Rank till 2011.
Another bit of information is with all these clickstreams building up giant databases, wouldn't it be a good idea to start archiving material, lest they disappear? Google's cache is good for the moment, but how wonderful it would be if missing pages could be found in a site like Internet Archive? For who know? This might be the final source of information - as the web spreads wider and deeper will the information be more temporal?
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The Book on the Booshelf
Henry PETROSKI, call no. 022.409 PET
I picked up this book because I was in the computer section and someone shelved it by mistake. But Petroski I liked because I read his previous books The Evolution of Useful Things
This book however is not about books but about bookshelves and how they came to be. He suggests that the development of books and bookshelves were concurrent. Which seems a rather obvious thing, but then have we ever thought of life without bookshelves? Have we ever thought a about bookshevles at all?
I'm reading this slowly and concurrently with Search. More on this later
Continued:
I took a break reading this book because I had too many books to read and had to return it when it was due. In the meantime I read Petroski's other book about Engineering Marvels which is more or less about bridges. (see other review)
Then I returned to this and can say this much. The man loves bridges. Even a book shelf is like a bridge. He even says it: "... designing a solid-looking bookshelf is essentially no different from that of designing a bridge". (p 81, 1999. Vintage Books. NY)
So.. I wondered how far is he going to go with bookshelf. Incredibly far. He talked about the evolution of manuscripts (a codex is a flat form of manuscript as opposed to scrolls as in papyrus). Once condices developed, the need for shelves began. At first books could be stored in chests and most advisable since these were precious things, encased in leather bindings and embedded with precious jewels etc. The kind of things you see in Epics. From there, books were read on lecterns, and then as more books were produced storage grew to be a big problem.
Interesting facts too that books up to the late 19th century were not bound at booksellers. One could buy manuscripts and have them bounded separately. Hence the profession of book binding.
The book goes far, from shelves to libraries, to stacks, to design of stacks, movable shelves. I must say a few of the chapters towards the end lost me as I have not seen some of these libraries or stacking systems.
A worthwhile book to read and keep, on the bookshelf.
Definitely makes me look at Ikea's billy bookcases from a different perspective from now on.
I picked up this book because I was in the computer section and someone shelved it by mistake. But Petroski I liked because I read his previous books The Evolution of Useful Things
This book however is not about books but about bookshelves and how they came to be. He suggests that the development of books and bookshelves were concurrent. Which seems a rather obvious thing, but then have we ever thought of life without bookshelves? Have we ever thought a about bookshevles at all?
I'm reading this slowly and concurrently with Search. More on this later
Continued:
I took a break reading this book because I had too many books to read and had to return it when it was due. In the meantime I read Petroski's other book about Engineering Marvels which is more or less about bridges. (see other review)
Then I returned to this and can say this much. The man loves bridges. Even a book shelf is like a bridge. He even says it: "... designing a solid-looking bookshelf is essentially no different from that of designing a bridge". (p 81, 1999. Vintage Books. NY)
So.. I wondered how far is he going to go with bookshelf. Incredibly far. He talked about the evolution of manuscripts (a codex is a flat form of manuscript as opposed to scrolls as in papyrus). Once condices developed, the need for shelves began. At first books could be stored in chests and most advisable since these were precious things, encased in leather bindings and embedded with precious jewels etc. The kind of things you see in Epics. From there, books were read on lecterns, and then as more books were produced storage grew to be a big problem.
Interesting facts too that books up to the late 19th century were not bound at booksellers. One could buy manuscripts and have them bounded separately. Hence the profession of book binding.
The book goes far, from shelves to libraries, to stacks, to design of stacks, movable shelves. I must say a few of the chapters towards the end lost me as I have not seen some of these libraries or stacking systems.
A worthwhile book to read and keep, on the bookshelf.
Definitely makes me look at Ikea's billy bookcases from a different perspective from now on.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Book of Lost Books
Stuart KELLY, Viking 2005
It's a nice title but unfortunately pretty hard to read. The concept of great books that were SAID to have been written. He wrote of an example, can't remember of some ancient Greek tragedian who was supposed to have created such monumental works that even Pericles was moved to tears. Then it was lost in time. When examples of his work were finally uncovered in the late 19th century, they had paled in comparison to mod. lit. Pretty lame stuff. The author concludes that sometimes lost books are better lost.
Other than the concept, the author is rather eurocentric, or as some of the reviewers said, western classical in inclination.
He sited Confucius and some Mencius on 2 pages. And another 2 page on Ibn Battuta.
Maybe too many great works had been lost in Asia. No thanks to book burning monarchs.
Surprisingly, this book is filed under FICTION
ps: I gave up reading this after a while because I discovered the next book more interesting
It's a nice title but unfortunately pretty hard to read. The concept of great books that were SAID to have been written. He wrote of an example, can't remember of some ancient Greek tragedian who was supposed to have created such monumental works that even Pericles was moved to tears. Then it was lost in time. When examples of his work were finally uncovered in the late 19th century, they had paled in comparison to mod. lit. Pretty lame stuff. The author concludes that sometimes lost books are better lost.
Other than the concept, the author is rather eurocentric, or as some of the reviewers said, western classical in inclination.
He sited Confucius and some Mencius on 2 pages. And another 2 page on Ibn Battuta.
Maybe too many great works had been lost in Asia. No thanks to book burning monarchs.
Surprisingly, this book is filed under FICTION
ps: I gave up reading this after a while because I discovered the next book more interesting
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