A Creation That Could Alter The Internet Forever
April 26th, 2011 | 
Author: A Creation That Could Alter The Internet Forever
The fledgling system Wolfram Alpha revealed at Harvard University in the United States last week takes the first approach towards that many consider to be the Internet’s Holy Grail a massive store of information that comprehends and replies to regular questions in the same way a human does.
Although the program is still new it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers.
Computer professionals predict that the new search engine could be an evolutionary leap in the evolution of the internet. Nova Spivack an internet and computer expert said that Wolfram Alpha could prove 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 provide a straight answer to queries like “how high is Mount Everest?” but it will also produce a organized page of related information all properly sourced such as geographical location and nearby towns and other mountains complete with charts and charts.
The real ingenuity however is in its ability to figure information 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 determine that you need to know the probability of cointossing. If you need to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is or the exact 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 only 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 private databases. Dr. Wolfram said he expected that about 1000 people would be required to keep its databases updated with the most recent discoveries and information.
Wolfram Alpha has been created with experts and academics in mind so its knowledge of popular culture is at the moment comparatively weak. The term “50 Cent” resulted in “absolute horror” in tests for example because it confused a query on money 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 significant number of popular culture information” Dr Wolfram said. “In some senses popular culture information is much more shallowly computable so we can figure out who’s related to who and how tall people are. I fully predict we will have lots of popular culture information. These are linguistic horrors because if you put in books and music a lot of the names clash with other ideas.”
He added that to help with that Wolfram Alpha would be using 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 someday all information like historical facts and important data will be kept in computers! If this starts a permanent change in education educators must become experts today! Teachers must be the pioneers of the newest 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: Wholesale electronics China
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