I love Stephen Wolfram. First he came up with the tool Mathematica, then a new way of modeling complex systems with A New Kind of Science. Now he’s created a tool that purports to “make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.”
What does that mean? It means you ask WolframAlpha a question and it gives you an answer. I asked “What’s the population of Vermont” and got a nice little stack of information. Or you can put in just one word such as “timbuktu.” Or you can put in two words, such as “Vermont North Dakota” or “IBM Apple,” and see the two sets of data compared side by side. (FYI, VT and ND have almost exactly the same population; IBM has fared better than Apple in stock price over the past year.)
Where does WolframAlpha get its info? According to The Guardian, from “the dark corners of libraries, government files and science labs around the world – with a little bit of human quirk thrown in for good measure.” The quirk is there to build credibility with early-adopters, such as geeks who already found these WolframAlpha easter eggs.
But it couldn’t handle a query such as “Can robots think?” or even “robot intelligence.” Oh well. It’s still getting bookmarked.
LINK:
- WolframAlpha
Actually, it’s pretty cool. Then again, it’s not just pretty cool — it’s extremely cool. Icy even.
