July 18th, 2011 | 
Author: A Creation That Could Alter The Internet Forever
The fledgling system Wolfram Alpha showcased at Harvard University in the United States last week takes the first step in the direction that many believe to be the Internet’s Holy Grail a global accumulation of data that understands and responds to regular questions in the same manner a person does.
Although the system is still new it has already generated massive interest and excitement among technology experts and internet aficionados.
Computer professionals think that the new search engine will an extraordinary leap in the advancement of the internet. Nova Spivack an internet and computer expert said that Wolfram Alpha could become equally as important as Google. “It is really impressive and significant” he wrote. “In fact it may be as important for the web and the world as Google but for a different purpose.”
Tom Simpson of the blog www.convergenceofeverything.com said: “What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a selforganizing internet? Possibly… I think this could be big.”
Wolfram Alpha will not only give a direct answer to queries like “how high is Mount Everest?” but it will also create a organized page of related information all properly annotated such as geographical location and nearby towns and other mountains complete with graphs and charts.
The real innovation however is in its ability to figure things out “on the fly” according to its British inventor Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated it will crosscheck and offer the answer. Ask it about D sharp major it will play the scale. Type in “10 flips for four heads” and it will guess that you want to know the probability of cointossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is or the precise current location of the International Space Station it can work it out.
Dr. Wolfram an awardwinning physicist who is equations.
“I’ve wanted to make the knowledge we’ve accumulated in our civilization computable” he said last week. “I was not sure it was possible. I’m a little surprised it worked out so well.”
Dr. Wolfram 49 who was educated at Eton and had completed his PhD in particle physics by the time he was 20 added that the debut of Wolfram Alpha later this month would be just the beginning of the project.
“It will understand what you are talking about” he said. “We are just at the beginning. I think we’ve got a reasonable start on 90 per cent of the shelves in a typical reference library.”
The engine which will be free to use computes by drawing on the knowledge of the internet as well as nonpublic databases. Dr. Wolfram said he expected that about 1000 people would be required to maintain its databases updated with the most recent discoveries and information.
Wolfram Alpha has been designed with experts and intellectuals in mind so its grasp of popular culture is at the moment comparatively poor. The term “50 Cent” resulted in “absolute horror” in tests for example because it confused a discussion on currency with the American rap artist. For this reason alone it is unlikely to provide an immediate threat to Google which is working on a similar type of search engine a version of which it launched last week.
“We have a lot number of popular culture information” Dr Wolfram said. “In some cases popular culture information is much more shallowly computable so we can find out who’s related to who and how tall people are. I certainly predict we will have masses of popular culture information. These are linguistic terrors because if you place in books and music a lot of the names clash with other concepts.”
He added that to assist with that Wolfram Alpha would be utilizing Wikipedia’s popularity index to determine what users were likely to be interested in.
With Google now one of the world’s top brands worth 100bn Wolfram Alpha has the ability to become one of the biggest names on the planet.
Dr. Wolfram however did not rule out working with Google in the future as well as Wikipedia. “We’re working to partner with all possible organisations that make sense” he said. “Search narrative news are complementary to what we have. Hopefully there will be some great synergies.”
Just pretend that eventually all information like historical facts and important statistics will be kept in computers! If this starts a permanent shift in learning teachers must become experts now! Educators must be the pioneers of the cutting edge technology on the web 2.0 platform! Start today. Click here to join the fastest growing community of teachers on the web. http://www.teachersweb20lounge.comAbout the writer: Amateur journalist
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