Taking it for granted

I stumbled upon this news story in Metafilter. One of Google's top exec was INTERVIEWED about the technology behind Google.

Now, I know very little about computer architecture and computer science in general, but I'd never thought about the actual amount of technology required to bring about a web engine so powerful and yet so ubiquitous and easy to use. We take Google's ease of use for granted so much. I remember the days fo yahoo and altavista searches and how lacking they were. Google was the light out of the cave. As Matt Loney says,

"When Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, he was alluding to the trick of hiding the complexity of the job from the audience, or the user. Nobody hides the complexity of the job better than Google does..."

Later on in the article they discuss the actual "Googling" process and the petabytes (PETABYTES!) of information stored in the hundreds of everyday hard disks located and mirrored everywhere. What intrigued me was the discussion about redundancies in the system, easily replaceable parts, parallel processing, and teaching the system about recognizing different strings of texts. Now, anyone who knows AI, in comp sci, psych, etc., please help me. Does this not sound like the foundation of an electronic brain? You know, hard disks as neurons, parallel processing, teachability? And if that's not the case, what's lacking in it being a foundation? I really would like to know.

Otherwise, why wouldn't I be surprised if Google's system somehow generates the first AI through their web engine?


On a side note, MSN released its own blogging pages...HEY MSN, you're a bit late to the party on this one. With Blogger and LiveJournal, you shouldn't have gotten into the game at all. Their page templates are better and frankly will work way better than yours ever will. You tried to compete with Google and embarrassed yourself and if it wasn't for metafilter, I wouldn't have known about this at all. Stick to something you're good at, like charging an arm and a leg for software...