Smart Web, Dumb Web

Suppose you consult a web page, looking for a major national park, and you find a list of hotels that have branches in the vicinity of the park. In that list you see that Mongotel, one of the well-known hotel chains, has a branch there. Since you have a Mongotel rewards card, you decide to book your room there. So you click on the Mongotel web site and search for the hotel’s location. To your surprise, you can’t find a Mongotel branch at the national park. What is going on here? “That’s so dumb,” you tell your browsing friends. “If they list Mongotel on the national park web site, shouldn’t they list the national park on Mongotel’s web site?”

Suppose you are planning to attend a conference in a far-off city. The conference ...

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