Is Search Broken? Some Mahalo Insight

Interesting Scoblevision video about “human-powered search” firm Mahalo.
Part I of Inside Mahalo, the Human Produced Search Engine | FastCompany.TV
An interesting section (at about 13 minutes) is with Eric Stephens, who’s “director of user experiences” for Mahalo. In the Mahalo “lab,” Stephens does something very close to an open-ended interview. Don’t know if Stephens has a background in ethnography but his methods are pretty ethnographic. In fact, those methods are even closer to what is done in British ethnography these days than to typical North American ethnography. Maybe just a coincidence but, in my mind, a good point for Mahalo as a company.

Most of the interview focuses on Jason Calacanis, Mahalo’s founder and CEO.
To be honest, Mahalo and Calacanis are kind of growing on me. One set of reasons has to do with JaCal’s most recent TWiT contributions and Véronique Belmont’s role in the startup. Doesn’t sound very rational but at least I acknowledge these biases.

There’s another side to my enhanced appreciation for Mahalo and Calacanis, and this side is more rational. I recently got this strange feeling recently that search was broken. I began to notice that my Google or Yahoo searches weren’t as effective as before. After blaming myself, I came to a conclusion which resonates with what Calacanis is saying here. The need for more and more reformulation of queries (with more and more words), SEO/result-spam, information overload, etc. One outcome of this “search is broken” feeling is that I spend more time going directly to a Wikipedia page by typing the URL directly instead of trying a search. Another is that I’m progressively giving Mahalo a chance.
Though I haven’t really integrated Mahalo in my routine yet, I do feel a bit like I felt when I first saw a beta version of Google.
Did I drink the Kool-Aid? Maybe a few sips.

Another point I can connect with: the blogging community as peanut gallery. Of course, some people talk about reactions to the Lacy/Zuckerberg interview as displaying mob mentality. But there’s more to it than that. In the aforementioned video, Calacanis talks about ignoring bloggers because they don’t represent the core user group for his company’s main product. Even though I blog quite frequently and now consider blogging a part of my identity, I can’t help but agree with Calacanis on this. In fact, some of that sentiment was behind my “geek niche” post just before SXSWi. Sure, bloggers and other ‘Net-savvy people are fascinating and influential in the context of online services. But they (we) still tend to represent a small proportion of the global population. Because of idealism and sociocentrism, several people would probably argue that despite clustering effect and limited demography, bloggers and geeks are “winning.” But social Darwinism has no place in this scenario.

Playfully Noted

Got a number of things about which I want to blog. Many of them in notes/outline form. Might have to wait a bit.

But one thing which keeps coming up is the notion of playfulness. Been blogging about it a bit over the years,  especially since this February 2006 post which was connected with my teaching. The next day, I was posting a short entry in French about playfulness in music. Music playing in the strongest sense. Free play.

That was over two years ago. Flies are being timed.
Still thinking about playfulness quite a bit. In music, learning, technology…
What I mean by playfulness is rather simplistic, but it works: free, undirected, aimless, open behavior. Acts of playfulness, in my mind, appear not to be goal-oriented nor competitive. Extremely low stakes. Failure isn’t even registered. No evaluation whatsoever. The opposite of performance, to go back to performance theory which inspired part of that first entry.
Of course, my notion of playfulness might be different to that of many of the people who work on and “play with” games. Some people conceive of fun as embedded in competition. As I’m personally not very competition-driven, my conception and perception are different.
I’m neither a game theorist nor an avid gamer. At best, I’d be labelled as one of those “casual gamers” game developers are finally trying to reach. So: I’m no expert. But I do enjoy discussions of playfulness facilitated by those who work on game. Thanks in part to the video game industry, playfulness is making its way into the technology/education confluence as well as in corporate circles.
Some recent things I’ve thought about in terms of playfulness.
Playing music on Touch devices or other handhelds. My French post on “easy musicking” mentioned Electroplankton. Other forms of handheld musicking:

• Nanoloop
  • Presented by Eric Skiff at BarCampAustinIII
• Bhajis Loops
  • Used it for a while on a Clié NX70V
• Jam Sessions
  • DJ Champion and His G-Strings
• MooCowMusic
  • iBand

Can’t help but think that handheld music can really “spring up,” especially in terms of casual musicking. With the release of the software development kit for Apple’s Touch devices, there’s mindshare for handhelds as ultimate interface.

Of course, music games are gaining attention and people are jumping on the bandwagon. After all, music games may mean big business. Usually, I blog about music at Critical World or at my ethnomusicology course blog. Here, I’m mostly thinking about playfulness. And music games aren’t really playful in my sense of the term. Too competitive.

In terms of playful learning, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about “playing with data.” In part thanks to Gapminder, that I just discovered through Google Spreadsheets (even though Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software has been acquired by Google over a year ago). In my mind, Hans Rosling’s 2006 and 2007 TED presentations about Gapminder really capture the spirit of playful learning. Especially in connection to critical thinking, open-mindedness, creativity, and cultural awareness. (Anthro FTW!)

Now, if I could only get paid to do a project on using Touch devices for playful musicking in learning contexts…