Tag Archives: search

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The Secret Cave

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Building on yesterday’s post which focused on a metaphor today’s musing is about an analogy.  Do not be afraid to enter the secret cave to find the answers you seek.

The secret cave is analogous to the hidden knowledge we don’t have.

The cave is ominous and a little scary.  Should we enter it to find out the things we don’t know.  There is an appropriate quote by the character Yoda from the Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi.

During a scene where Luke Skywalker is hesitant to enter the cave lest he finds out things he does not want to know, Yoda prompts him  “Find the answers you seek, enter you must”.

Fear of the Unknown

Caves are dark.  We cannot see what awaits us inside.  It could be dangerous, even life-threatening.   Overcoming this fear is necessary if we want to unlock the knowledge within.

Of course, this does lead to the very pertinent question, is there knowledge within?  Otherwise, why would I waste my time and take the risk of proceeding into a potentially dangerous situation?

Motivation to overcome the fear of the unknown is sometimes hard to achieve because you are not sure if the reward will be there.  Is it worth the risk, is it worth the effort?

Enlightenment

Unfortunately, sticking with the analogy, you need to enter the cave if you want to achieve enlightenment.  To paraphrase the earlier quote in order to find the answers you seek you must enter the cave.

It is the only way.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Search or Navigate

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Finding information involves two activities, and only two.  Both techniques could be used, or just one but you either search or navigate.

These approaches apply to all information gathering in general, however the internet (basically an enormous data store) can serve as a good example of applying these two techniques.

Searching

An extremely popular way of finding information on the internet is through search.  Many different search engines have been built for this purpose (e.g., google, yahoo)

The specific methods used vary by search appliance (i.e., how it works to find what you are looking for.)  In general though, you enter what you are searching for and the search engine trolls the internet data sources and provides a list that matches your query.

The way these search applications interpret your search terms varies, also how deeply they troll the data. Some times you need to try various terms before the results map to what you were actually seeking.

Navigating

Navigation starts on a web page.  The information on the page provides links to other pages or data sources which may in turn have other links.

You navigate through the links to find the information you seek.  There are various techniques for describing the information the link will take you to.  These techniques help the navigator determine which links to follow.

Helping people find the information they seek

Recognizing information is retrieved through search, navigation or a combination of these two methods is key to being able to help data/information providers optimize the ability for their data to be found.

Simply put, design your data retrieval capabilities with both search and navigation in mind.