This has been one of those low level thoughts that bobs up from the neural surface (the Little Limited Machine in my skull).
The bemoaning of web search devolving from the list of ranked blue links to something that zeroes on on what some machine language thing suggest. And what gets portrayed in the Everything Painted With AI future is all our interaction is putting questions in a chat box (or mumbling them into a phone). When Google was sharing their “idea” for what search would be,m it seemed solely focused on returning answers.
The idea of search being a funnel, just narrowing it down to a packaged “answer.”
Search as a funnel.
And yes, very often I am seeking a very specific answer. The lyrics of a sing. The name of the inventor of something.
But more often that not, even when I am looking for something specific, I like to keep my eyes tuned widely for the tangents, what was it once called, the “Adjacent Possible”, the interesting links to take me off to the internet rabbit holes. That’s what Google Traditional did, you got the potential answers at the top, but the further down the results you go, the more the doors open to explore. This was the niche filled by Miilionshort that rather than taking you to the top ranks of search, opened the off beaten tracks.
I see it search as a spray.
I’m old enough to remember using the card catalog in the library, you;d get the answer as a call number, a shelf location, more or less like a web address. Sometimes it was useful, sure. But I can remember the magic of letting my eyes wander left and right down the shelf, to see what might be of interest, adjacent.
And that is one of the potholes of the rush to AI glory, as in the vein of doing the mundane more “efficiently”, “faster” to get to the answer or to more quickly write that sentence. The fascination with the funnel focus is a move to diminish the wandering of the mind, the tuning of one’s senses to the unexpected.
I want search as both a spray and a funnel, not always at the same time. Stop forcing me to funnel. I want spray.
I’m also old enpugh to remember the web before any search — see Jay Hoffman’s How We Searched Before Search I was totally there for the NCSA What’s New Page. And can remember trying all the comic named tools- Archie, Veronica, Jughead (what an age when this was a naming convention). I remember the first web walking indexers, like MOMSpider. And oh my when Altavisita came on, it was a huge advance in exploring the web that had grown big enough in the 1990s to make a Whats New tracking not possible.
And when Google hit the web with that bare bones interface that did magic with the results, was it some kind of holy feat? Ahh, now, it was briefly until int became the Mega Borg of Everything.
When the first AI summaries of search results came on, I was all with the tricks to hide them. But it gets harder and harder ()yes, go ahead and tell me how your pet favorite search works better, I’m still most proficient with my Google chops, I can skim past the add and the AI chaff.
But as anyone knows, more and more those summarized results look potentially okay, with checking the listed sources (being wary when they rely on Facebook/reddit). And now I admit, on a few cases I have actually typed some clarification into the prompt box on those results. Yikes, I am biting off on the AI chub. Lightly. And damnit, in some cases, it has helped me narrow down an issue when it asks for a specific model of a device I was trying to troubleshoot. The funnel is handy.
On the other hand, I recently started probing as I reached for Google to find the answer to something I knew but forgot (I was looking for all of the URL variations WordPress gives you for RSS feeds, like when you cna aske for RSS2, or Atom). I knew it, but wanted to confirm.
And damn the AI smartness kept giving me wrong answers. Repeatedly. With self-assurance. Here is some fun as a I yell into the box
A lot of my searches are my usual keyword and search modifiers I have used for a long time, but I am sadly finding too, I am reaching for “Mr. Google” as my mother-in-law used to call it and asking almost question like queries.
Am I sliding more easily into the funnel?
Turning in another direction, in an ABC News (down under ABC) interview about internet enshittification the great and coiner of the word Cory Doctorow was asked if the internet was still fun, if there were places of joy out there. He offered a good list:
But I see wonderful things all day long. Mastodon has an algorithmic feed called Explore. I discovered Texture Tuesdays this week. And it’s photographers who take pictures of really dramatic textures. I went down a rabbit hole. It was amazing. Public Domain Review just spelunks through the Welcome Trust and various state archives. New South Wales has a really good archive but also the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress highlights a couple of things every day and every day it’s amazing and interesting and cool and weird.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-08/cory-doctorow-on-the-ai-bubble-and-inevitability/106982988
Even Mastodon has an algorithm that feeds its users, even the timeline serves up link after link on a treadmill. And indeed, I find it useful, but still it’s a Mike Caulfield stream. I feel for most others who are in that stream, they sample, read, repost, maybe bookmark, but then its back into stream. The one that flows like a funnel.
But I have this practice that is also credit to Mike’s SIFT model. When I spend some time with a link, I wonder, “Who made this?” “What else do they create?” “What is this organization about?” I whack of all but the top of the domain, and now the spray nozzle has opened. I find other projects worth noodling into. Or, most likely, a writer/organization that has written something of interest, also (hopefully) has places of linking out to web sites they find interesting.
Is the “web” just one fat fiber strand with strands hanging off, or is it really a web?
It’s the link! the humble <a href=""> that makes the entire web a sprayer, sending me in all kinds of directions. I find more of my interesting links a share and store come 3, 4, 5 links off of the one that sent me out. Why would I depend on what one service feeds me to explore, when ever single link out into the big internet sea is a book on the shelf that deserves some sideways scanning?
In actuality, I want both spray and stream, but I am used to thinking this way. The more that AI supported systems function mostly to funnel information, I cant help bu wonder how people will learn to look sideways for the spray. I see it as creating more dependence on the answer box to provide like a vending machine.
All of this is just my idle speculation. But poof, this is my blog.
Update 10 Minutes Later
I had this tab open from a link Scott Leslie mentioned in my Mastodon funnel-flower to a curious service that by name alone appealed to me – check out rabbithole at https://rabbit-hole.reppie.org/
My first was to play with it, see what happens if you rabbithole rabbithole
but the more I dug the more interesting it got, and I went but just a little bit deep.
@sleslie Oh you are sending me deep. I am intrigued by rabbit-hole, its results offer mixes of links, videos, concepts, etymology, each leading deeper/wider.
I like how it saves a trail (Hello Dr. Memex) that itself is sharable
Featured Image: Patent images of a funnel and a sprayer, likely not the most kosher for being open licensed. Come and sue me.
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