In a recent article in The Guardian, Cory Doctorow called for search reform. “Search is the beginning and the end of the internet,” he wrote. While I agree things need to change, a reformed Internet built around search is like a reformed energy policy built around oil. If we only look for solutions through the narrow lens of search, we’re unlikely to solve these problems at all.

Cory’s article is a tight encapsulation of widely held concerns over search. We share too much private information with search engines. They hold too much power over what is relevant and important. And there is a troubling lack of transparency and accountability into how search engines weigh these decisions.

His bottom line: Vesting this kind of power with a handful of companies is a “terrible idea”.

Fair enough, but when he ventures into possible solutions, Cory, like so many other Internet watchers, makes a serious wrong turn. “Put that way, it’s obvious: if search engines set the public agenda, they should be public.”

He’s correct in pointing out that we need a “transparent, participatory solution”. But he’s taxing search as both the villain and the liberator, when neither label holds.

This is the crux of a seemingly universal misconception: that search will always be the beginning and the end of the Internet. It seems impossible for many to imagine a next-generation Internet that doesn’t have searching at its core.

But dynasties rise and fall, and so will search as our primary online experience.

It’s happening now. There are complementary approaches to validate that search is not the beginning and the end of the Internet. Social networking is the most obvious example. Many people now prefer to tap their social network rather than searching for the information themselves.

Looking further out, companies like Primal Fusion and Siri are advocating for new consumer interaction models based in computer agency. Rather than using computers as tools, we can task them like personal assistants, without involving people at all.

The answer to the problems cited above isn’t in reinventing open versions of successful commercial initiatives, but rather relentless innovation forward. We need to broaden the online environment with new networks and new consumer interaction models.

More concretely, Google knows nothing of my search when it’s brokered through my social networks and computer assistants. A distributed Internet experience mitigates the risks of centralized services.

So the next time you hear a suggestion for a better, faster, smarter search, repeat after me: Search, baby, search! Then go imagine a bigger, broader, richer way to experience the Internet.

Primal Fusion is pleased to support this discussion by sponsoring a lecture by Cory Doctorow, Copyright versus Universal Access to All Human Knowledge and Groups Without Cost. It will take place on Thursday, October 22 at 4:00 PM at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, as part of Quantum to Cosmos (Q2C): Ideas for the Future. We hope to hear from you, at the event and online.