# notes --- - [[google search is actually close to the conceptual overlay of the memex]] - [[{2.2a1a1b} hypertext builds context]] - we should have access to the tools of the internet back-end or whatever – our identity graphs, “the” knowledge graph, the ability to contribute freely to the overlay of the web - having trouble wording this, but i’ve been thinking about it a lot already re: “a new way to web”… if they’re collecting all of this information about us to better deliver, e.g, search results, we should be able to *do something* with that. we should be able to utilize it as the actual *users*. # highlights --- > What I find interesting here is not just the way I use Google, but the way I use the internet. In some original visions of the Web, I would start at a post like that picture, and click a link in it to something, which would lead to a link to something else. Hypertext! But what I find myself doing these days (and what I’ve been doing for a long time I think?) is ==not following links in documents to other documents, but rather, using Google to generate a list of relevant links== about documents. >… what happened to the original vision of the Web as a hyperlinked sense-making machine, one where we’d wander ==hyperlinked paths to slowly build context==? ^fb8633 > The architecture of the web (fatally, [according to Ted Nelson](http://www.thetednelson.com/designs.php)) put links _in_ the document. On the web, the links you see are stuff the a) author knows, and b) the author wants you to see. >The problem for Bush _wasn’t_ finding things the _author_ knew or shared. It was in finding out what _others knew_. And Bush’s solution was to ==capitalize on the shared annotations of other readers==. It was this part — not authorial links — that was the revolutionary bit. And it was this piece, sadly, that was not replicated on the web. >Google Search as a portal-into misses the way that Google Search has become a portal-between and an overlay-on-top-of. >…they all show people seeing something one place online and plugging a search into Google to get greater context. This is true in even simpler ways. Someone reads about a TikTok video and tries to find a link to that video. They watch that TikTok video, and then search to find out if the claims in it are true. While reading the article on whether the claims are true, they put in a term or name in that article they don’t recognize to get information on what it refers to. > >That is not _portal-into_. That is _overlay-on-top-of_. So ironic, this is one of the first articles I’m reading since downloading the [[horse browser]], and I feel like this is exactly what it’s for – the trails he’s describing. >To some extent,[6](https://mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/google-search-is-an-overlay#footnote-6-145697192) this is the _overlay that Bush imagined_. ==Google is an engine that supplies people with links, summaries, and comment about things they are looking at online or elsewhere.== It does that in a different way than Bush imagined — you are looking at an overlay that is produced out of _statistical aggregates_ of many different signals, of which “what do people talking about this subject link to” is just one. And rather than an explicit link overlay, a user has to jump out of a document and throw whatever keyword they just came across to trigger the context. But when you are looking at the process as a whole of people reading or viewing something online and then sifting through a set of hyperlinked Google answers, it’s hard to see it as anything but this. In fact, without Google, the current web isn’t particularly linky. If you want links, you fire up Google to produce some. >Google Search is a corporate product, and the methods by which it provides its overlay are often opaque. While it processes useful signals from crowd behavior, it is not crowd-sourced in the way that the original Memex was proposed to be. > >But in many other ways, Google Search _is_ the Memex… Many people link to documents describing what the documents they are linking to are (or indicating their value for a subject based on those links). Those linking signals are combined with dozens (hundreds?) of other signals, the Knowledge Graph, and whatever else[7](https://mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/google-search-is-an-overlay#footnote-7-145697192) to take keywords and provide a set of relevant links, often in response to a piece of media in front of you. Collectively those links represent some set of what other people have found useful on this subject or regarding this subject or piece of media. > >Like the Memex, Google increasingly _orchestrates, annotates, and connects_. >Google often sits not at the beginning of a journey, but at multiple points in the middle of a journey and _on top of_ the journey, a gloss providing the webbiness of the web, connecting media and experience both in and out of the browser. >For a long time the model of personalized results was based on the idea that if you hoovered up everything about a person you could give them more relevant answers to things…. from the overlay perspective, ==knowing what the user _last_ looked at is _infinitely_ more useful than processing the last 10,000 pages a person visited.== # trail --- - [People Have the Star Trek Computer Backwards – Hapgood](https://hapgood.us/2015/02/20/people-have-the-star-trek-computer-backwards/) - [What is SIFT? - SIFT: Evaluating Sources Online - Research Guides at Southwest Minnesota State University](https://libguides.smsu.edu/SIFT) - [How to Use Google Chrome's New Deep-Linking Feature](https://www.howtogeek.com/658842/how-to-use-google-chromes-new-deep-linking-feature/) - [Google Search's AI is (or should be) about cognitive load](https://mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/google-searchs-ai-is-or-should-be) - [We Should Put Fact-Checking Tools In the Core Browser – Hapgood](https://hapgood.us/2018/04/21/we-should-put-fact-checking-tools-in-the-core-browser/) - [Ted Nelson - Designs](http://www.thetednelson.com/designs.php) - [Beyond Conversation – Hapgood](https://hapgood.us/2015/07/21/beyond-conversation/) - [ecovention - Google Search](https://www.google.com/search?q=ecovention)