The Future of Search
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In the last hundred years, the world has seen so many revolutionary and technological advancements that have changed our lives so completely that they are hardly recognizable. And as the decades go by, advances in technology go forward at G-force speeds, and it’s almost impossible to keep up with them. As search engine technology gets better, faster, and amazingly more in line with the results users want, there are a few things still that may seem more like science fiction than possible near reality.
Search engines are continuously attempting to refine and streamline their results to fit the user’s search parameters. Semantic search has made some advances, taking the context of a web page and delivering ads to target that particular audience, but it's a long way from being perfect. We are seeing trends in speech recognition software, and it keeps improving.
The next logical product of Internet search is voice activated search. What’s amazing is that it is already being done on a far broader scale than you might imagine. The next logical step for search engine results is to not have to speak at all, but rather to “know” just what the user wants. The only way to do this is either to develop a psychic machine, or to plug directly into the human brain and read our thoughts. You might be surprised to find out that experiments have already begun.
Accessibility options for those with hearing impairments, disabilities, and poor vision have existed for a little while now, and these have already evolved well into the world of semantics from speech recognition, of which one group of these accessibility options is referred to as alternative input devices.
These can include systems that operate by inhaling and exhaling (called sip and puff systems), touch screens, and electronic input devices that can be worn on the head and operated by eye movement, ultrasound, infrared and other light systems, or even sheer brain waves. Brain waves are the very weak electrical signals given off by the firing of millions of nerve cells in the brain, which can even be measured outside of the human head.
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