@MLClark I never wished for AI-enhanced search! Just give me the facts, ma'am.
Agreed.
We had a highly promising search system (I was of the generation expressly trained in Boolean searches in primary school, because people were so excited about the possibilities of the internet as a research tool), and then it was compromised via ad / sellout promo placement and the counter-market of search-engine optimization tools.
Now this latest nightmare of mediocre data synthesis is the cherry on top. We had good things! And we're terrible stewards of them, it seems.
@MLClark It was also compromised by the proliferation of catalog formats and the search systems developed for those catalogs. Early attempts to unify library catalogs via Z39.50 protocol and the WAIS engine didn't become universal. GIS databases have unique search capabilities that most of us can't exploit. The photographic metadata in my Lightroom collection is rarely exposed on the web. Have you every tried to search big data with SPARQL? https://www.ontotext.com/knowledgehub/fundamentals/what-is-sparql/
@peterquirk
Is this the modern internet you hoped for, when 21st-century systems were still a twinkle in everyone's 20th-century eye?