Surprise!
The business model for search engines sorting fact from fiction has been a failure. We’ve misplaced our trust in algorithms that were never designed to deliver judgments, let alone weigh the complexities of source knowledge.
Why should digital investigations be any different? Nobody is in a rush to pay Google or Bing by the query. However, we do “pay” out in wasted time, unreliable sources, a lack of confidence in these questionable answers, and our very agency to inform the choices we present our research clients.
Searching Out Loud takes the exchange between researchers and search engines out of one-way conversations and into the realm of detective work. The bullhorn-like proclamation of the book’s title suggests that sound search practices are neither a secret nor restricted to a hushed confession-like disclosures between petitioners and their technological priests.
Forming questions, matching patterns, unscrambling signals, weighing explanations, and questioning the assumptions they’re based on can create quite a commotion!
They pierce the silence of the screened-in user, opening the reader up to a more transparent, repeatable, interactive, and test-worthy way to let our clients, colleagues, and even adversaries into our discovery, vetting, and analytical process. Indeed, it’s that transparency that carries the investigator’s voice to a level of trustworthy: Not just an attentive listen, but a call for the informed actions of our case teams and stakeholders.
