What is the technology that will replace search as the means by which
people address large information stores?

Short answer: 'Search'

Long answer: slicker pre-indexing

Hate to answer my own questions, but ...

just improving an element in an existing system does not constitute a
new technology that can replace it.

If you suggest that airplanes can supplant automobiles, I might agree
that a new technology is replacing an odler one. But if you want to
suggest that automobiles are replaced by 'automobiles with better
tires", it fails my test.

I follow your point

However 'slicker pre-indexing' is more like making an automobile that
can jump through worm holes - although it looks like a 'search' is
taking place, most of the grunt work has already been done.

IMO the bottle neck is really at the human interface

At the crudest level, whether one negotiates menus to hone in on what
one is after, or whether one uses one Input Box.

There is probably some mileage in a form of 'interrogation' that
measures the relevance of each set (or item) of data supplied,
possibly also some form of graphical map that helps the user hone in
on relevant areas

I can envisage being able to 'flip' the view of the data into some
sort of pie chart - back with the automobile analogy, it is a matter
of improving the dashboard and the controls.

Quite interesting

again, your comments are helpful but "stuck"

If I ask ... what technology will replace the horse and carriage
(metaphor for search), the answer cannot be "putting shoes on the
horses" (pre indexing).

The answer is the automobile.

Now .. you grasp why i asked the question that i did. Nowhere in the
horse and buggy paradigm can you find an automobile. You don't get
internal combustion engine from horse, you can't get gasoline from
hay.

Automobile is a quantum leap. I am looking for the quantum leap.

You may do better on the human interface part because it looks like a
log jam. After all, no matter how clever a search engine, all it does
is deliver a Document List.

That means that no matter how fast or clever, after the DL is
delivered, I am no better off than when I went to university in the
70's and put a stack of books on the table after perusing some card
index.

I think I can see where we diverge.

Both the horse and carriage and the automobile are 'technologies'
designed to perform a 'function' - getting from A to B.

You regard 'search' as a technology, I regard it as a 'function'
- the 'function' is getting a document list, preferably honed down to
pages rather than bound volumes.

Actually, from my similar memories of Uni in the 1970's, I reckon I
would have been substantially better off Googleing for data rather
than laboriously mining printed books for specific information.

Even now I often find myself poring back through a book to check
something, and am rather looking forward to electronic 'books' on a
paper like medium - with search capabilities.

One can of course replace a 'function', generally by making it redundant.
Perhaps that is what you are getting at.

Last comment did bring up the issue of semantics. now exposed, it
allows us to clarify the issue.

I do not disagree that using google to get the documents is better and
faster, but once someone has a stack of books in front of them (or a
list of documents on a gogole results list), one is at the same place
- no... it really does not matter which one you are - the book guy or
the google guy.

Let me restate the issue then, incorporating your comments.

If relativity (Einstein) stands on the shoulders of Newton .....

what will stand on the shoulders of Search.???????????????????????????

I've an idea of what you are getting at

The objective is obtaining knowledge
- it is possible that the data could be 'digested' prior to presentation
- a sort of automated Wikipaedia

For a long time I've envisaged a device like a wristwatch that trains
the wearer into using nerves for I/O communication (not so
implausible, really an extension of Braille)
- as a result, one could simple 'know' things, just as one digs in ones memory.