..which I’ve been talking about for some time…from the piece:
Having humans, not software, supply the advice is important. Max Ventilla, who formerly was at Google and is now Aardvark’s chief executive, said, “Often the most useful answers don’t answer the original question. Example: ‘You don’t want to go to the Caribbean now — it’s the rainy season — you want to go to Hawaii.’ ” ONCE you try Aardvark’s service, you can’t look at Yahoo Answers, the current leader in questions-and-answers, without feeling pity for its now-manifest limitations.
also doesn’t bode well for Hunch
It’s a nice idea for sure… but it also illustrates an issue which is going to be rearing its head more and more… as it is in the newspaper industry, music and so many other areas of cultural and economic life…
From Vernor Vinge* who’s a hot topic these days:
“The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity. In the coming of the Singularity, we are seeing the predictions of true technological unemployment finally come true.”
But actually he slightly misses the mark as I see it…
my blog response:
Yet in many cases, and as a result of the Internet’s unique nature, the value is actually produced from a distributed network which extends beyond the boundaries of the entity which focuses that value into marketable form and derives the market’s benefits.
Actually the Chagora structure is a designed beginning of a response to that and other civilization Singularity issues.