There’s a new Web tool which is going to revolutionise the way we use the Internet. Some experts are saying that it’s going to be ‘as important as Google’ or even ‘the Google Killer’. That’s the line, anyway.
Wolfram Alpha is a new search service which can offer answers to questions that you ask it in real English.
“The goal is to find a way to make the systematic knowledge that we’ve accumulated in our civilisation computable,” says the project’s creator, Dr. Stephen Wolfram, “to find a way to take all that data that’s out there, and all the models and methods and so on that we know, and somehow combine them to be able to compute whatever can be computed about the world. It’s a pretty big project.”
While it’s being hailed by some as ‘The Google Killer’ it should be remembered that Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine per se; rather it is a computational knowledge engine or an ‘answer engine’. You can ask it a factual question and it will actually compute the answer for you directly, rather than merely scanning Web pages, as Google does.
“Like interacting with an expert, it’ll understand what you’re talking about, do the computation, and present the results in such a way you’ll be able to understand what the consequences are,” Wolfram said in a talk at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
This means that Wolfram Alpha will not only be able to answer direct questions like “what is the GDP of France?” but you will be able to perform computational actions, such as dividing the GDP of France by the GDP of Italy for example, and providing the answer on screen, instantly.
However, while Wolfram Alpha has attracted a lot of publicity, some experts say it’s not all that new.
Dr Ian Watson, of the University of Auckland’s Computer Science department (and a regular NetGuide contributor – see pg 32), says the START Natural Language Questioning Answering System, developed by MIT (see start.csail.mit.edu) performs a similar function, albeit in a simpler form. It’s been running since 1993. And Wolfram Alpha is unashamedly targeted at students and academics for now; the average Web surfer is likely to fi nd it too tricky and picky.
“I don’t think this will be any great worry to Google,” Watson told 95bFM’s The Wire, “and if they are worried, they’ll probably just go and buy it.”
Expect public release of Wolfram Alpha in the immediate future. The interview with Ian Watson can be heard at tinyurl.com/opm86b
