“The future of search may look a little like Kirsten Goldenberg, a 14-year-old high-school student in Los Angeles,” William M. Bulkeley reports for Technology Review. “When she needs help with a homework problem, she no longer turns on her laptop to bring up Google’s search box. Instead, she pushes the microphone button on her iPhone and asks Siri, the sassy digital assistant that understands voice questions.”
“‘You can ask Siri anything, and if she doesn’t understand, she’ll ask if she should search the Web. It’s really helpful,’ says Goldenberg, who sold her collection of American Girl dolls on eBay to raise funds to buy the new Apple phone when it came out in October,” Bulkeley reports. “Some analysts now believe Siri could disrupt Google’s dominance of one of the most valuable franchises in technology: search-engine advertising.”
Bulkeley reports, “BIf a user asks Siri for ‘the best’ Chinese food or a ‘nearby’ Honda dealership, Siri defers to Yelp’s website, where dedicated ‘Yelpers’ have posted their opinions and ratings. Ask it for a specific fact, such as the circumference of the Earth, and Siri will try to retrieve the information from Wolfram Alpha, a search engine that answers factual and mathematical questions… Luc Barthelet, executive director of Wolfram Research, which also makes the software program Mathematica, says that the week the iPhone 4, featuring Siri, came out, the number of queries to Wolfram Alpha increased 20-fold.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “62Sparkplug” for the heads up.]
I’m glad Wolfram Alpha is getting more use. When it was first announced I remember thinking it was a great tool but I didn’t see my self accessing it often because it was easier to just Google it. Now I use it constantly with Siri.
We’re way ahead of Siri, need I say more?
When I asked Siri “How far is it from Washington DC to Baltimore”, she gave me instructions for driving to Washington from my current location. It seemed idiotic at the time that Siri could tell me how far it was to the Moon, but not the distance between two cities.
It was a while ago that I tried that. Maybe I should see if she’s improved.
——RM
As other sources become resources for Siri, it will get better. Siri was bound to happen though.
We talked about it in the early 80’s. Your “computer” would retrieve what you needed by knowing what you asked. The “computer” would disappear. There will be no massive centralized source of information but information will come from numerous sources completely unawares to you.
If you were standing there with your human administrative assistant and asked her how far it was, they might be able to tell you but they would probably ask why. You would be asking for a reason. More than likely they would understand the context of why you were asking. They would be able to decide to say ‘that’s close enough to drive.’ In the context of why you asked, Siri wasn’t “wrong”. Someday Siri may ask follow up questions. Sorta like clippy but functional.
Perhaps as a student it will learn that you ask these questions for research. As a contractor it is trip planning.
It’s about time somebody wrote this article. Siri has already turned up earth in Google’s pasture, and proof of her disruptive nature can be seen in defensive and dismissive statements by tech notables. The article’s point about clients paying Yelp premium prices so Siri can find them is another sign that revenue streams will meander away from the underhanded SEO poisoning technique. And Siri may even help out the progressive enhancement movement by dimming the lights on seizure-inducing web pages. We’ll see. It’s a tall order for a small bot, but Shakira is small too, and she owns Colombia and a good chunk of the rest of the hemisphere…
And Shakira’s lyrics make no sense so Siri has a leg up.
Yeah but shakira has an ass… A pretty awesome one at that!
Prices are premium now but by definition computer power “democatrizes” information. It becomes cheap because once it is made accessible through databases or something like Siri, it is only a matter of retrieval which almost cost nothing.
In the early 80’s there was the Source. It was an information utility. One of their products was a custom search for X number of dollars. Potentially in the thousands. Now, it is a no cost search on Google.
The Record Companies are dead and don’t know it because. Computers have made whole industries obsolete and we will be seeing the effects as Siri becomes better.
Siri can do the same thing to search engines but make it useful. If Siri can instantly tell me the closest pizza joints instantly, I do not need Google. Do I ultimately care where the information comes from? No. Do I need a sponsored ad cluttering up things. No.
I hope that folks smarter than me are figuring out how to use Siri in Education. Imagine a course Siri based. Able to look at your statements and questions and reply intelligebly.
Siri is the future.
Great comments. I see that you are confident in taking the long view and understand that economic forces drive all of these processes, but too many people ignore all that and simply cast votes for their favorite outcomes, using all kinds of illogical mental models—the same ones that select our political leaders. Sadly, that kind of thinking is certain to persist until we are all dead or the flying saucers come to save us from ourselves.
No doubt.