People don’t want to read.
They just want information when they want it.
I see it at this blog too. People ask questions that have answers in past posts. But they don’t want to read or search. They just want to know.
All of the stuff I write that surrounds the information they want? It’s noise.
There’s really no amount of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that can connect people with what they really want.
What people do instead of reading blogs like this or doing manual search are voice searches. It’s easier to pick up a phone and ask Siri or say “OK, Google.”
Algorithms munge through retrieved results and condense them as much as possible into just facts.
And so, thinking about this today, I coined the term “Voice Agent Optimization” (VAO).
Because in the future, blogs like this won’t exist.
Dopes like me will instead be creating “InfoCards” (ICs) to feed Siri, Google Now/Voice Search, Cortana, and whatever other HAL-like Voice Agents pop up in the future.
That’s even if people like me can still exist.
Software is taking over. It’s already “writing” for Forbes.
Plus, companies can do VAO for themselves. Want to quickly know the specs of the Onda V975w? Onda will have an InfoCard all ready for a Voice Agent to retrieve.
But what those InfoCards won’t be able to tell is the truth.
And that brings us to a Warren Ellis-like future depicted in Global Frequency.
Future queries to Voice Agents will be like, “Find me someone who owns an Onda V975w and can answer this question about it: XXX.”
And the Voice Agent will consult a bunch of InfoCards and lo, someone who’s registered with them will get alerted by a Voice Agent that someone needs assistance. Instead of International Rescue, Informational Rescue.
And with each question answered, another InfoCard will be created to feed the Voice Agents, so one less human being is bothered with it.
Blogs such as this, if they exist at all, will be short posts that don’t relate to one another at all. They’ll just be a collection of InfoCards designed to be retrieved by Voice Agents.
And the backend algorithms of Voice Agents will munge InfoCards to dynamically create new InfoCards, further lessening human intervention and interactivity.
Mike Cane’s xBlog 
Global Frequency could be a good candidate for a TV series of short seasons where the main characters changing every season, which is becoming more common these days..
There was a TV pilot made quite a while ago. Might still be available (illegally) on the Net. I liked it. Watched it again recently and it held up.
Mike, you do realize how damned depressing this is?
I had a conversation along those lines way back in the late 1960s. I had accidentally come across computers and was in “mind blown” mode, even if the things resided in sterile rooms and were fed punched cards. Sitting at a local pub with some people who worked with the computers, we got into a conversation about the future, and how these machines would eventually digest and spit out all the knowledge in the world. I recall telling those guys that I reckoned I would be 6′ under long before that happened. Hah!
Now I’m thinking: how long before these machines eliminate most manual / low-skilled labor? And, what happens when that happens? Rage against the machines?
Oh it’s *very* depressing. Just go read Jules Verne’s “Paris in the Twentieth Century” for a glimpse of the future.
Very few people have caught on to the fact the entire economic system will have to be revised to accommodate such a future.
When I was young, I could get five bucks an hour (well over minimum wage at that time) for dealing with *paper files* — remember the vast file cabinets corporations used to have — I’d get *paid* just to take them out and put them back! No such jobs like that today!
Nah, its nice that someone aggregates the info. Thanks for that!
You didn’t click the links that show software is starting to do that.
so,where we are going to find “opinion” then?
On the Global Frequency.
McKinsey had this listed in the top 10 disruptive technologies last year. They called it “automation of knowledge work,” although nothing in their report was as vivid as what you describe.
Depressing? Yes. Plausible? Yes. Probable? I’ll go out on a limb and say no. I think at some point people might get tired of interacting with machines and go back to seeking interaction with humans instead.
Have you seen humans lately? Over 80 shot in Chicago this past weekend!