Neilson interview
May 31st, 2006
Jacob Neilson interviewed at Guardian Unlimited Technology. First time I read his name I mentally pronounced it ‘Yacob’, and now I’m stuck with that.
On web 2.0:
…at one end you have pure data and information on the web, and on the other the full applications. Most things exist in the middle. Information-only websites are still useful, and then something like Microsoft Office has rich interaction styles that are still easier to do on the desktop.
On search:
Search has changed from being something that’s somewhat useful to being something that works surprisingly well. People do tend to only type in two words, and two words is a very minute and impoverished description of a human need. But search engines can – most of the time – pick four or five sites that you actually want. Because people have experienced that it works, this has become their number one behaviour.
On self as web Galileo:
It’s kind of like being an astronomer and you’re looking up at the sky and saying that it looks like the earth is revolving around the sun, not the sun revolving around the earth. You can report it and the Pope can like it or not, but it doesn’t change what’s going on.