The Hunch Engine
How do you look for something when you don't know what you're looking for? Imagine you could plug a computer into your brain and get the machine to do the donkey work while you concentrate on the creative bits. A novel piece of software that generates names and hunts down pictures gets close to doing just that.Or when you know it must be there somewhere but you have no idea what it looks like? Or when you have no idea how to formulate your query? Or when you would like to expand your exploration to adjacent or not-so-adjacent concepts? The "hunch engine" blends a computer's ability to rapidly sift through a large number of possible solutions to a problem with human hunches for what looks or sounds right. Whether you are trying to think up a company name or find the perfect image on the web, the system does the hard work and lets you have all the fun. If your only guiding principle is the "obscenity principle"--I know it when I see it--you need not a search engine but a hunch engine. Developed by Icosystem of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the hunch engine uses a genetic algorithm, an interactive evolutionary algorithms to help users navigate large spaces, combining the ability of computers to sift through massive amounts of data and that unique human ability to see "stuff" (sometimes even when stuff is not there) with their right brains. The hunch engine enables a form of "high-throughput screening by humans." Can this become a consumer application? Is it a new way of browsing? This was seized 4 u at New Scientist, O'Reillynet.com & Joho The Blog |
posted by Roland at 3/10/2006 08:11:00 PM
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