So let’s get serious about search for a moment. Just how do you sort billions of pages and millions of people online to find the information or the person relevant to you?

In his seriously paradigm-shifting book, The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton outlines the growing evidence that humans are NOT determined by their genes. For example at the outset of the Human Genome Project scientists concluded the human genome would contain a minimum of 120,000 genes in order to cover the 100,000 plus different proteins that make up our bodies and the at least 20,000 regulatory genes which orchestrate the activity of the protein-encoded genes. They found just 25,000. If genes control us eighty percent of the required DNA does not exist! (Biology of Belief, Page 62.)

So, if we aren’t determined by our genes what does control us? In Lipton’s words “It’s the environment stupid”. Genes are surrounded by proteins like babies wrapped in blankets. They become active as their protein covering is removed exposing their DNA structure and enabling them to replicate. Researchers found tiny electromagnetic charges are responsible for the covering and uncovering of the protein blanket. Hence Lipton’s phrase. It’s environmental factors, namely electro-magnetic changes in the proteins blanketing our DNA, that are responsible for determining the way we function.

What’s this got to do with the future of search? As the title of Lipton’s book suggests, these electro-magnetic charges are in turn the result of what we belief about ourselves. It’s belief not DNA that makes us who we are. We literally program our lives from our self image. This is a seriously important insight for the future of search. For until now most initiatives I have come across during my visits to Silicon Valley have been focused upon improving relevance based upon external behaviours gleamed from what I share about myself and my search history - where I live, my income, gender, purchase patterns etc. While of course mapping the external patterns of my life does make my web experience more relevant to me - I get search results for movies near where I live - Lipton is suggesting this is not the whole story.

The Biology of Belief takes us to the source of what creates meaning in our lives - our self-concept. How we see ourselves, the purpose of our lives, the values that govern our behaviour, and the things that matter to us are what drive relevance for us. We are in fact relevance-creating-systems, and these systems appear to be governed not by chemical DNA, but by ‘thought DNA’.

Until two months ago I knew nothing of Lipton’s work. But for the last six years we have being uncovering the same principles in the performance of the organisations that make up the S&P500 and NASDAQ where the culture (read: self-concept) of an organisation has a significant influence on its performance. (The Enhanced Performance of Firms with Whole-Systems Cultures) Independently of Lipton we took these insights and asked ourselves if these could make a contribution to the future of search. Could we help people and organisations map out their ‘DNA’ - the beliefs that create meaning in their world?

Two years ago, with that vision, VortexDNA was born. When we shared early proto-types with people in Silicon Valley we were politely listened to and then asked to prove what we were saying was true - that the ‘DNA’ profile of users can improve their search experience.

So that’s what we are doing with mywebDNA - a Firefox extension that will circle the Google search results most relevant to you based upon your ‘DNA’ profile. The profile is created in about 3 minutes by answering a few straightforward, yet profound, questions about yourself.

MywebDNA was launched in October 2006. From the results we are getting we are beginning to build up a picture of the extent to which your beliefs really do make your world - in this case Google search results - more relevant to you. That’s important because if Lipton and fellow biologist are right, and ‘its the environment stupid’ , the future of search lies, at least partially, in the ability to match search results with who I am - my DNA. That’s exciting because it means that what’s relevant to me - my Google search results, or book recommendations from Amazon - will change as I change. I am the creator of my world and with my ‘DNA’ profile I can re-consitute my world as I choose to re-create who I am.

So it could be that every time you use mywebDNA, you are a part of the community creating the next generation of the Internet. Now, there’s a thought.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Human Intention, vortexdna, search, semantic web, Google, Amazon, Silicon Valley. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.