Scott E. Hartley

While the recent launch of Google Labs’ “Google Squared” Internet search continues to innovate in its display of objective information.  Google Squared aggregates and displays results in a new modular fashion, but it still pulls such information from published online sources; I blog therefore I exist.  If one should think without writing it down online, however, such knowledge could never be aggregated, could never be presented, and would never be shared.  The advent of Social Search changes this.  Innovators such as Aardvark (vark.com), co-founded by former Google News Product Manager Nathan Stoll, are striving to surface subjective knowledge by integrating social search into forums such as Google Chat.  On Vark, I recently asked for the best Mexican restaurant in Davis Square, received four results within 10 minutes, and confirmed with my Bostonian roommate that these were –in fact– useful results.  Perhaps social search can revise the Cartesian 2.0 “I blog therefore I exist,” returning it to the more harmonious –and Google Chat accessible– “Cogito ergo sum.”