Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Dilbert's Creator is a Brain Surgeon

I read this amazing story about Scott Adams tinkering with his own brain, and all I can say is, the number of things we know about our minds is a tiny fraction of what we have yet to discover.

Fantastic. Hat tip, Evan Williams.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Matt Marshall on PowerSet: "Search has largely been solved"

Matt Marshall writes in VentureBeat on stealth search startup PowerSet:
"As much as some people want to deny it, search has largely been solved by Google and others, at least for the average person."

Matt, I hope for your sake that this quote doesn't become one of those "everything has been invented" c. 1895 or "the world needs three computers" c. 1950 kind of quotes. Today's search is miraculous by the standards of what's come before, and disastrous by the standards of what is yet to be done. Search has a tremendous distance yet to travel, and as I have written prevously, there are several distinct lines of search innovation that each will yield great consumer benefits. My company, Zvents, falls into category #1; PowerSet falls into category #3.

Barney is a friend of mine and I have known about PowerSet for quite some time, so I'll refrain from commenting on them other than to say they are very smart, very serious, and will either succeed or fail in an interesting and spectacular way.