Quote:
It doesn’t simply return documents that (might) contain the answers, like Google does, and it isn’t just a giant database of knowledge, like the Wikipedia. It doesn’t simply parse natural language and then use that to retrieve documents, like Powerset, for example. Instead, Wolfram Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions — like questions that have factual answers such as “What country is Timbuktu in?” or “How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?” or “What is the average rainfall in Seattle?”
Think about that for a minute. It computes the answers. Wolfram Alpha doesn’t simply contain huge amounts of manually entered pairs of questions and answers, nor does it search for answers in a database of facts. Instead, it understands and then computes answers to certain kinds of questions.
Article here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/08/wo ... to-be-big/Seminar here:
http://intrinsitivity.com/home/2009/03/ ... ram_alpha/Holy. Fuck.
Some of you know Wolfram from his book "Mathematica". He is a groundbreaking author and scientist who's been making the rounds lately about his new book "A New Kind of Science", which deals with the item above.
I'm an information systems geek. It is for work like this that I entered the field. Absolutely stellar.