Appropos of nothing, I came across this database file of natural-language queries that were typed into some search engine and that make for some good time-wasting reading. The data is from a project called Webclopedia, from the Natural Languages group at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, which is “intended to answer questions posed to it in various languages, drawing its answers from text collections and/or the web, from multiple languages.” The question databases were drawn from 27,000 questions submitted to answer.com’s search engine. (Answer.com is no longer around, but here’s their 1999 site courtesy of the Internet Wayback Machine).
I use to have this ticker on my desktop, from where I don’t remember (maybe Lycos?), that displayed a continual stream of search terms that were being entered in real time into their search engine. I found it fascinating to just stare at this thing and see how many “Jennifer Lopez” queries would go by in 5 minutes. It was like having a pulse on the impulses of millions of web surfers. But how I’d love to have a ticker for something like Ask Jeeves, with natural-language questions flying by. Rather than viewing mere impulses, I could feel like I had a window onto strangers simultaneously seeking answers to life’s questions en masse.
Here’s are some queries from the above-mentioned database that amused me:
— Where do the earthworms go when it is real dry ground? It seems you can dig forever and not find one.
— Where is a really good sports [web] site?
— Where can I buy a hat like the kind Jay Kay from Jamiroquai wears?
— If knowledge is power, and power corrupts, how can humankind survive?
— If you hover over the international date line in a helicopter, will time stand still?
— Why are there Braille things on the ATM Machines that people drive through?
— Are your eyeballs the same size throughout your whole life?
— Are you supposed to put your tongue in the other person’s mouth when French kissing?
— How do you send a movie transcript to Hollywood so that it can be produced into a film?
— What are the four railways in Monopoly?
On second thought, maybe I don’t want to see that ticker after all. Reading the various questions I got the feeling that all I would really be doing would be peering into the minds of children doing their homework and adults playing trivial pursuit.