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A Look At the Wolfram Alpha "Search Engine"

An anonymous reader points out a ReadWriteWeb piece on an hour-long demo of Wolfram|Alpha (which we discussed at its announcement). Stephen Wolfram does not like to call it a "search engine," preferring instead the term "computational knowledge engine." It will open to the public in May. "The hype around Wolfram|Alpha, the next 'Google killer' from the makers of Mathematica, has been building over the last few weeks. Today, we were lucky enough to attend a one-hour web demo with Stephen Wolfram, and from what we've seen, it definitely looks like it can live up to the hype — though, because it is so different from traditional search engines, it will definitely not be a 'Google killer.' According to Stephen Wolfram, the goal of Alpha is to give everyone access to expert knowledge and the data that a specialist would be able to compute from this information."

4 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I wouldn't hold my breath by Kratisto · · Score: 0, Redundant

    That, and the name "Computational Knowledge Engine" is about as catchy as an Ayn Rand speech.

    --
    Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
  2. Re:Google started the ball rolling... by Schemat1c · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Feed the trolls not.

    --

    "Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
  3. Re:Google started the ball rolling... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Like Yoda you talk. Too much Star Wars have you watched.

  4. Re:athe real question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Restate my assumptions: One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well... Right in front of me... hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.

    9:13, Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal. I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see, but something else had changed inside of me. That day I had my first headache.