| It's because your interface to the internet is not browsing-based. Back when we used things like the Yahoo directory as our main method of searching, we'd travel down different categories, finding unexpected websites as we went. That felt like exploring, because you were making choices about which direction to go, and that would determine what you saw next. With a search engine, you tell the search engine what you want, it takes you there. There's no browsing there, so very little discovery. The other main method of finding things today is aggregation: places like Hackernews, or Twitter. The reason using those sites doesn't feel like exploring is because they're just pushing new things right at you. It's not a matter of you seeking anything out, or making any choices, so it doesn't feel the same. You can get that feeling of exploration on Twitter or (e.g. YouTube, Twitch, etc.) by using the relationships of individual people or channels as a path to travel down. But, that's not the most common way to use those sites, nor what they're optimized for: they want to show you a list of recommended new things based on an algorithm, and that won't feel like you're exploring, because you aren't; you're on a guided tour. I think these companies gave us what we want most of the time, and one consequence is that the idea of a directory-based interface to the web went away, along with the feeling that using such an interface evoked. Wikipedia is one of the only sites many people still use that is still organized like a hyperlinked directory, and meant to be used to serendipitously explore and find unexpected information yourself. |