{"id":1606,"date":"2010-02-27T14:13:03","date_gmt":"2010-02-27T22:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2010\/02\/how_google_taught_itself_to_be\/"},"modified":"2010-02-27T14:13:03","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T22:13:03","slug":"how_google_taught_itself_to_be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2010\/02\/how_google_taught_itself_to_be.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Google is the new Ludwig Wittgenstein"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

From Jason Kottke<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Steven Levy on how
\nGoogle’s search algorithm has changed over the years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Take, for instance, the way Google’s engine learns which
\nwords are synonyms. “We discovered a nifty thing very early on,” Singhal
\nsays. “People change words in their queries. So someone would say,
\n‘pictures of dogs,’ and then they’d say, ‘pictures of puppies.’ So that
\ntold us that maybe ‘dogs’ and ‘puppies’ were interchangeable. We also
\nlearned that when you boil water, it’s hot water. We were relearning
\nsemantics from humans, and that was a great advance.”<\/p>\n

But there
\nwere obstacles. Google’s synonym system understood that a dog was
\nsimilar to a puppy and that boiling water was hot. But it also concluded
\nthat a hot dog was the same as a boiling puppy. The problem was fixed
\nin late 2002 by a breakthrough based on philosopher Ludwig
\nWittgenstein’s theories about how words are defined by context. As
\nGoogle crawled and archived billions of documents and Web pages, it
\nanalyzed what words were close to each other. “Hot dog” would be found
\nin searches that also contained “bread” and “mustard” and “baseball
\ngames” — not poached pooches. That helped the algorithm understand what
\n“hot dog” — and millions of other terms — meant. “Today, if you type
\n‘Gandhi bio,’ we know that bio means biography,” Singhal says. “And if
\nyou type ‘bio warfare,’ it means biological.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Or in simpler terms, here’s a snippet of a conversation that Google
\nmight have with itself:<\/p>\n

\n

A rock is a rock. It’s also a stone, and it could be a
\nboulder. Spell it “rokc” and it’s still a rock. But put “little” in
\nfront of it and it’s the capital of Arkansas. Which is not an ark.
\nUnless Noah is around.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Image via<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"jasonkottkepuppet.jpg\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Jason Kottke: Steven Levy on how Google’s search algorithm has changed over the years. Take, for instance, the way Google’s engine learns which words are synonyms. “We discovered a nifty thing very early on,” Singhal says. “People change words in their queries. So someone would say, ‘pictures of dogs,’ and then they’d say, ‘pictures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}