Before long, a larger idea takes shape in my head, built upon the trail of associations the machine has assembled for me. Compare that to the traditional way of exploring your files, where the computer is like a dutiful, but dumb, butler: “Find me that document about the chimpanzees!” That’s searching. The other feels radically different, so different that we don’t quite have a verb for it: it’s riffing, or exploring. There are false starts and red herrings, but there are just as many happy accidents and unexpected discoveries. Indeed, the fuzziness of the results is part of what makes the
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