Smartphones, smart weapons, smartcards: as the new economy becomes increasingly obsessed with intelligence, just about every item you care to name is wising up.
You might then assume that search engines are in on the trend, and they are. Well, they're trying. We still have a long way to go until someone invents the SEVUTA (Search Engine that Vaguely Understands what you're Talking About). Instead, we have the SECOY (Search Engine which Churns Out Results by the Yard).
Despite industry hype about the search for the holy grail (accurate, context-sensitive information retrieval) most, perhaps all, of the engines you can recruit are churners. You know the form: you type the words 'pet lovers' and are told about unnatural relationships between beast and man, or the best way to barbeque a dog.
You are now so used to this abject level of service that you probably neglect to notice how many 'hits' yielded in the course of research miss the mark. Indeed, they are often so lousy that the outdated quasi-human technology known as the librarian could do better on a miserable Monday morning with a headache.
But if you want to flirt with the possibility of accuracy, you could always embrace the diversity of the metasearch engine. As the Greek prefix, which means 'beyond', implies, this variety promises information retrieval of such quality that it borders on the transcendent.