This alpha search engine’s no sheep
In his story The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges imagines a universe comprised of a possibly endless series of book shelves. The men of the library believe that the books contain the answers to all their questions, but the inability to find useful information among the infinity of data nearly drives them mad.
Some even suggest arranging the letters at random, until “by an improbable gift of chance” humanity’s great works are produced. To anyone who has spent hours trawling through pages of Google suggestions, this will sound familiar. Without a key to the library’s code, this is a folly that can only lead to more despair.
Physicist and entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram claims, in a sense, to have found that key. He cites an even older forebear, Gottfried Leibnitz, who, when he wasn’t arguing with Newton about who invented infinitesimal calculus (they both did), wrote pioneering work on human knowledge.
Wolfram writes that Leibnitz “imagined that one could represent human discourse using logic and mathematics”. Then he imagined that one could use a machine to work out answers from this. Wolfram thinks that Leibnitz was on the right track, but that we now have the technology to realise this.
Wolfram’s new search engine, Wolfram Alpha, launched last week and promises to revolutionise the way we seek knowledge. By analysing and comparing structured data, Wolfram Alpha aims to answer questions directly, rather than simply referring you to a list of potentially useful sites.
Putting this into practice is, of course, extremely complex. But Wolfram, a scientist-entrepreneur who wrote a technical paper on particle physics as a teenager, received a PhD at age 20 and invented a computer programme used by scientists around the world, is perfect for the task.
Wolfram Alpha is not looking to replace Google, but to be used as an additional tool.
As powerful as it is, its services are much narrower (although minutely precise: a sample image reveals a query about intercity bus driver salaries). However, it is telling that Google are about to launch a similar service, Google Squared, using semantic technology to answer users’ questions.
Wolfram Alpha search discussion
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