Dolphins, in Kelowna, big dolphins statue, Google does not, and likely will not for a long time understand directions by landmark, indicates lack of cultural context.

Happy Belated Canada Day to everyone.

I discovered a major limitation to a service for everyone, like Google, yesterday(July 1st). I was asked to meet a group of friends at the “dolphins”. I asked where that was, and they gave a firmer location.

Before I asked, however, I had done several google searches, including local searches. None of the results were anywhere near where the event was supposed to take place. This information was nonsensical to me, as any form of local slang or landmarks is to someone new to the town.

As I approached the meeting point, I understood their meaning: they were in front of a very large, very hard to miss, dolphin statue.

But this illustrates a fundamental gap in automated services like Google: a lack of cultural context. There is no way to tell Google that this may be a locally relevant meaning, vs say, the Dolphin Hotel.

My gut feeling on the matter is that without active participation to tag and add cultural context to locations, that there will never be any way to add this information. As well, the people that know the contextual information are more likely to be people that don’t care, and already know what it means. Why would they add the information?

Then again, that is what seemingly confuses people about Wikipedia, about why would anyone contribute?

But in an increasingly network-centric world, this kind of data, this locally/culturally relevant data about locations and landmarks is important, and extremely valuable.