Indeed, the Web now is evolving, just like the brain does. All the elements are present already, just morphing.

The power of the Synaptic Web, as a focus/term, is the fact that it emphasizes also/another aspect of the Web which perfectly fits the evolution of it.

It’s exactly that, that makes this complicated. The human, not-mechanizable element, which is at the same time a context definer, giving meaning to content, environment and goal.

Do wonder how this will or even can be solved through machine learning etc.

@ Dan
Do you think we should even strive for such solutions, which are able to fully grasp the umbrella of personalization? Time, mood, role that the person is in at that point of time etc…

The web is at a point where it can finally shift away from a hyperlinked world to a better and more interesting synaptic world.

The explosion of social media and the human filtering, ordering, and tagging that has come along with it has opened up a new horizon. Machines can only do so much. Google’s results are good but it’s the human element and the “hidden” connections that bring great content together in the context we’re looking for.

-Chris

As for personalization, it’s a necessary step regardless of who’s gonna really get there first. Search is a process for eliminating an uncertainty occurring in a complex environment. The uncertainty is influenced by any factor that influences the searcher, and so is the context.

If we want to get the context right, which is basically the tunnel to the solution, we have to consider all those factors under the umbrella of “personalization”. Present and emerging solutions grasp the importance of personal preferences, social circle and location, but we shouldn’t forget about time and mood for instance either. Google’s personalized search is a good start, but there’s more down the road.

I’ve gone through a couple of your articles on your blog, excellent articles.
Content mapping is exactly that, what filtering can accomplish better in getting matching results.

What’s your opinion on personalized search by Google for instance?

Another article that might interest you is: The Content – Context Diarchy -> http://agoramedia.co.uk/blog/marketing/the-content-context-diarchy/

What the synaptic web does, is defining the connection explicitly instead of relying on an implicit connection hinted by keywords. That’s why search gets replaced (in most cases) by filtering. A piece of content with relevant connections is centered in its ideal context. There’s no need to search, only to ‘look around’. More on this topic in my blog: http://collectiveweb.wordpress.com/category/web/search-engines/

@Atle:
Hyperlinks make very poor connections. The synaptic web paradigm goes far beyond this by defining connections that actually say something about the relation between two pieces of content.

I do refer with patterns versus content, in a way that content and context are symbiotic.

Truly, the two cannot go without each other, be it patterns-content or content-context.
Right now though, context/patterns do become more important, because the data on itself is not enough anymore.
When the Web just started to form itself, an HTML page was enough, by evolution of the Web, the context gets more focus, because of the massiveness, the flux.

Good example of Wikipedia!

However, I believe this actually describes the web itself – lots of individual sites and pages that are *connected* using hyperlinks.

I don’t agree that “The patterns between content are more important than the content itself” – without the content the patterns/connections are useless, but they increase/strengthen the value of the content.

A great example is Wikipedia; imagine if all the internal links were removed – it would still contain a lot of useful information, but it would be much harder to find related information as you would have to search manually for it yourself.

Which also illustrates the point of filtering; you may find a topic in Wikipedia through searching, but further information is often found using the internal hyperlinks that are “filtered” to only link to related information (otherwise, almost every word in Wikipedia could have been a hyperlink).

Very interesting article

Thanks for the great words, good to read that from you!