t e c h i e - t a l k s ::: technology at its best

A new paradigm for using web applications has emerged. The landing page looks similar to Google, with a simple layout and that familiar search box. But what lies beneath this new search engine is something powerful and breath-taking. Meet Wolfram Alpha - Brings search engines to a whole new level. The algorithm sounds extremely smart to a certain extent, it sounds just as scary too!

Unlike your normal search via keywords, Wolfram Alpha uses what they call a Knowledge Engine to churn out search results that are not keyword-based but rather, question-based strings. For example, instead of searching “Google+birth date”, a typical search on this search engine would be “When Google was born?” The algorithm is a combination of natural language and powerful mathematics.  You can search for something like “What is the 99th digit of Pi” and it’ll give you the right answers!

But science is just one of the domains it knows about — it also knows about technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, music, and more.

It also has a natural language interface for asking it questions. This interface allows you to ask questions in plain language, or even in various forms of abbreviated notation, and then provides detailed answers.

The algorithm is written by Wolfram, who at the age of 20, got his first Ph.D. in theoretical physics. In 1988 he launched Mathematica, powerful computational software that has become the gold standard in its field. In 2002, Wolfram produced a 1,280-page tome, A New Kind of Science, based on a decade of exploration in cellular automata and complex systems.

This site is a must read. It describes the functions and capabilities of this new search engine. However, Wolfram Alpha will not be like HAL9000 or even a real-life Skynet. It will not be able to recognize feelings or even tones in a sentence. However, I don’t see that such an implementation (at least the latter) would be far from the near future. However scary it may seem, it is far from being able to cause any harm.