Navigate, don't search

The web creates new challenges for information retrieval. The amount of information on the web is  growing rapidly, as well as the number of new users inexperienced in the art of web research. People are  likely to surf the web using its link graph, often starting with high quality human maintained indices  such as Yahoo! or with sea... See more

Everyday, we land on the internet without a map. Instead, search is the dominant wayfinding paradigm. It is the information equivalent of exploring the local area at ground level. A search is a hypothesis, an instance of trial and error. With enough searches, we can usually get where we're going. However, we lack the overall context of how everythi... See more

Browse versus search is a radical increase in the trust we put in link infrastructure, and in the degree of power derived from that link structure.