Silverstein Hits the Bong, Orlowski Hits the Roof

OK, now I really have taken a shine to Google Director of Technology Craig Silverstein. I always liked him, what with his oft-repeated quip that search engines ought to be like the computer on Star Trek, but in a SES speech this morning, apparently in a bid to outdo himself, he conjured up the idea of “search pets.” Damn, I wish I had stayed for this! From WebProNews, Silverstein speaks of a future some hundreds of years from now in which:

These search pets would not necessarily be like a pet dog, but more like “a genetically engineered beast.”

Adding to the science fiction, he believes search pets will be able to understand emotions and allow people to search for things that aren’t necessarily facts. For example, searchers can ask search pets, “What did Bob mean when he said that?”

Helping increase and enhance communication, search pets will understand the way the world works and the way humans interact. Search pets will be able to determine and untangle what searchers mean politically and socially. ….Search pets could also help out in the bedroom. Take marital issues, for example. Guys, when you ask your honey what’s wrong and she says nothing – there IS somehting wrong and it’s NOT nothing. Silverstein sees search pets as being able to find to the correct answer to these tricky questions.

Will searching as we know it be completely replaced by search pets?

“We’ll still search for facts,” he says, “but in all likelyhood the facts will be contained in a brain implant.”

Oh man, if that doesn’t give Andrew Orlowski all he needs to go apeshit, I don’t know what will.