I'm fascinated by the fact that our search for knowledge has really not changed much in the last 10 years. I still google and assess things in the same way as I have always done. Yes I have tabs now to store my data, or I can use Evernote / Onenote to store or collate, but really the process is very similar to how I've always done it.
Now this would make me immediately think "maybe I'm a dinosaur' and others are doing things in radical new ways which I am missing, but when I ask every colleague in every walk of life the answer is the same. Generally speaking when we want to answer a question we simply start googling (Binging or something else) and collecting data. We then add some judgment and either write a paper, buy a model of car, decide on which island to stay on etc. Nothing really helps us to find knowledge and speed our process to achieving it. In fact in many ways its slower because we have so many more sources and modes of data that aligning them and concluding is hard.
Just recently, thanks to Paul Weismantel, I was directed to this Ted Talk. While it doesn't answer my needs, it does summarize very nicely that current tools do not deliver knowledge. In this knowledge economy that is a surprise and a challenge for us to solve.
Enjoy and I'd be interested to hear how people meet their research and knowledge needs.
Andreas Ekström: The moral bias behind your search results
