Wolfram Alpha: Answering the questions that matter…
Polymath Stephen Wolfram (famed for AOT Mathematica and his book entitled A New Kind of Science) has been developing a knowledge engine that uses a natural language interface. It’s a bit like Google except:
Where Google is a system for FINDING things that we as a civilization collectively publish, Wolfram Alpha is for COMPUTING answers to questions about what we as a civilization collectively know.
It’s the next step in the distribution of knowledge and intelligence around the world — a new leap in the intelligence of our collective “Global Brain.” And like any big next-step, Wolfram Alpha works in a new way — it computes answers instead of just looking them up.
So basically you type in a question in normal language and it should provide an answer, rather than links to webpages that might contain the answer.
Anyway Wolfram Alpha will be launching in May.
[via Charles Stross, ComputerWorld, Physorg etc][image from e-magic on flickr]
Stephen Wolfram’s immense tome 
