Blekko

First, I’m not a computer guy, so everything I’m about to say is rank speculation.  If anybody sees any technical flaws in it, anyplace where I’m stating something that’s obvious to anybody under the age of 40, or any case where I’ve totally misunderstood what the internet is or does, feel free to say so in the comments.  Really, I don’t moderate my comments.  You could write “You are a fucking idiot and probably ugly, too” and it would get posted.

When I start getting thousands of hits a day, and scores of comments, that might change.

Anyway, Blekko.  It is, according to some, the next, the new and improved Google.  It’s certainly got the name for it.  I can just imagine it

An Infinite Number of Monkeys at an Infinite Number of Keyboards Would Eventually Type Something More Intelligent Than This Blog

replacing Google as a verb. “Just Blekko it!”  “Have you ever Blekkoed yourself?”  It’s got a nice ring to it.  I’m a bit skeptical, though.  About a year ago, a friend of mine was seriously excited about a thing called Scroogle, which was supposed to be a less commercial version of Scroogle, and tried to convince me and all of our friends to use it.  I tried it, couldn’t really see any difference – and it never caught on.

The thing with Blekko is they are more agressive about weeding out the irrelevant websites, which they do with volunteer monitors.  Sort of like Wikipedia, I guess, or that SETI program that uses your sleeping computer to look for communication from alien intelligences.  Well, like Wikipedia, anyway.

I think it’s not only a great idea, it’s an important step on the way to the Internet becoming an intelligent entity.  We already have a huge number (not infinite, but huge) of monkeys banging away at a huge number of keyboards, just waiting to stumble across that genius work of science, philosophy, literature, or how-to guides which will put humanity on the path to permanent and ever increasing prosperity, bring an end to warfare, hate, cruelty and racism and open the door to an era of enlightenment that will make our heads spin.

But we’ll need a better filter to catch it, an editor who (or which, I guess) will know it when he/she (it) sees it.  If it’s Blekko, great.  If not, something else will come along.