Science Fiction Becomes Reality

I came across Wolfram Alpha from a rumor that Microsoft’s search engine Bing would present some of the content that Wolfram Alpha generates. Then, Time magazine had Wolfram Alpha as one of its top 50 websites.

So what, exactly, is Wolfram Alpha? It’s not a search engine per se. It doesn’t provide links to answers. It GIVES you the answer that it calculates or finds in its database.

According to Wolfram Alpha

Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

From simple things like converting measurements to plotting out mathematical equations to the weather any place on any given day to geographic data on major cities to the fish production of France. Or even a comparison of the fish production of France to that of Poland.

It’s definitely worth watching the video on the site.

What else? A quick look at companies by their stock symbol, or comparisons of companies. Calculate mortgages. Find nutritional data of foods or add them up for a meal. Everything from mortality data to quantum physics.

I did find an article that says it falls short on baseball statistics, but this tool almost makes me giddy with delight!

Let me explain. The Internet has three basic uses – email, information and shopping – in that order. The information aspect has grown exponentially but finding that information can be a chore.

I remember the time when there was an actual Internet Yellow Pages book. Yes, an actual book with listings of “all” of the web sites in existence.

Google was a Godsend, but it’s constantly doing battle with black hat marketers who try and trick Google into listing their web sites when the don’t have the information you’re looking for – they are all trying to sell you something instead. Hidden text, keyword spamming, directory sites, link farms, the list of things to artificially rise in Google search results goes on and on.

Plus, Google usually presents you with the first 10 of over 2 million possible web sites that may have the information you’re looking for.

In all of science fiction computers were supposed to give you answers (okay,  maybe not HAL). The reason it was called science fiction was because it was fiction – there were no computers that gave you answers.

Present day search engines may point you in the right direction, but they don’t give you answers.

Wolfram Alpha doesn’t know everything, but it’s a great start.