I had a revealing conversation with a relative of mine who is a Doctor. We were talking about Internet, social networks and professional information. Actually, I was interested in knowing how does he use the computer every day.
The answer was very simple: I use my laptop five to ten times per day depending on the number of patients I visit. He literally said:
In the morning, when I arrive to my office, I read two or three different online newspapers (I wish I could learn how to use RSS),. Then I open my personal and professional email (I use to receive all kinds of jokes from other doctors, lots of spam and some professional newsletters I read in less than five minutes). In this same session I see the weather forecast for the next days and that’s all.
At lunch, I revisit my email (both of them), search some medical information when I want to revise some aspects of certain pathologies, update news (don’t have time to see the news on TV) and, from time to time, visit my Linkedin account.
During the afternoon, to prepare patient’s visits, I use to access an image database created internally with the images and videos we record on every patient. That helps me to remember their clinical dossiers and to see the evolution of the treatment.
After a long day, at home, I have another laptop I use just for fun: email, search information on interesting travels I would like to do and, sometimes, search new gadgets (TV, music, cameras).
I then asked him about his preferred search engine. And the answer was not the one I expected (Google or Yahoo). He answered he was bored of these search engines because of the big amount of unnecessary information they offer in every search.
He told me he was expecting some smart company to create a single platform where he could “place” all the services he is using: email (both), his own images and videos database, RSS, library, travel agency, newspapers and newsletters (titles would be sufficient) and other stuff that could change from time to time. He wanted this tool to synchronize automatically in his two laptops and, also, to be available in some private website (so he could access it from other’s computers). And, of course, he wanted to change anything he’d like, from colours to contents, in the most easy possible way.
It’s not the first time I listen to this same comment, and my own experience is that I’ve also build a centralized unique website to link all my needs of information, access to networks, banks, service’s accounts, etc.
Unconsciously, what we are doing is staying away from doing more and more searches and, instead of this, building our own system of information. This personal system is generated by our previous searches of information (a lot of them), contacts with others, and of course experience.
All these outcomes drove us to be aware of the different places we need to visit in the internet (our hard drive or network) to feed our desires. So now we tend to navigate directly to these sites instead of starting googling or yahooing.
