ABSTRACT
When search has access to and better understands the world in which it operates, the result is not greater access to information “stored” on the web. As we have seen, the capable web is not a static store from which we can draw, but is instead a hot soup of trillions of micro-sized characterizations of the real world. Some of these characterizations manifest in the classic web pages we’ve come to expect from the Internet, whereas others are more latent and transitory (“likes” and location data, for example), and still other characterizations enable systems to manipulate the real world. Once we get our heads around the new tapestry that is the web and think through the way search will have both access to it and the ability to participate in its creation (rather than just retrieve from it), we can glimpse a future of what search will actually do.
