Computational Knowledge — the next frontier in Internet Search Engines
- Image Credit: www.alexchiu.com
Have you heard of†Wolfram-Alpha? †How about this tagline: †“Making the world’s knowledge computable”?
Wolfram-Alpha offers a sneak preview to†an ambitious, long-term project which aims to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. †It works like Google in many ways. †Enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram-Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer.
Google has similar initiatives. †Did you know for instance that you may now use Google to make some basic calculations? †You enter 1+1 for instance and it will give you the answer: †2. †Google can actually do a lot more than basic arithmetic. †You can enter sqrt 100 and it will return 10 (the square root of 100); or enter the trigonometric function Cosine 90 and it will return -0.448073616.
But Wolfram-Alpha is something else. †It goes beyond mathematical calculations. †I tried entering “distance from earth to sun” and it gave me 360,147 kilometers. †Oh, and without asking for it, it also offered the Metric-English conversion: †223,785 miles, as well as other related matters such as “current distance (of the moon) from Earth,” “average distance (of the moon) from Earth,” etc.
In an attempt to fool it to force it to commit a mistake I tried typing in all sorts of †stuff like:
“What is love?” –†”A strong positive emotion of regard and affection, the kind humans sometimes express toward one another and computational knowledge engines express toward the Internet.” (How about that?!)
“Sept 17 1970″ (my birthdate — yeah alright I am old, whatever!) — Thursday (day of the week I was born); 38 years 11 months 1 day ago; 260th day (in 1970); Birth of John Ritter, an actor, in 1948; etc. (My jaw literally dropped at this point!)
I haven’t given up on trying to find a loophole so I pressed on.
I typed “IBM” and it returned with IBM’s (i.e. the computer giant) latest trade in NYSE, current known market capitalization, current known revenue, current known number of employees, current known P/E Ratio, current known Dividend Yield, etc., etc.
At this point I must add that Wolfram-Alpha is actively learning and it is learning fast. †Why do I say this? †It is because just a few days ago, when I first stumbled on it I already tried typing in “IBM” and it was not able to figure it out… YET.
It is not yet that good with common acronyms. †For instance I typed in “LBM” expecting it to return “Loose Bowel Movement” and a length clinical discussion on what causes it, how to cure it, etc., but instead it interpreted it as LB (i.e. pound). †I’ll try it again a few days from now.
