Failing Forward

There seems to have been (in the past year) a surge in the market to label any type of Information Retrieval system a “Google Killer.” First it was Cuil (which wasn’t so cool) which was a big flop. Then this weirdo came out with Wolfram Alpha, the “Computational Knowledge Engine” – not as much press as Cuil, so not as much flopping. And now we have Bing (aka “Live Search” 2.0 (aka “MSN Search” 2.0)) which had a fantastic debut, slipped back down, and has been gaining more traction.

“Google Killer” was definitely a would-be appropriate label for Cuil or Bing. But Wolfram Alpha, not so much. The “weirdo” that envisioned it is actually a man by the name of Stephen Wolfram, who contributed to the areas of cellular automata and studying Universal Turing Machines. [Actually, Wolfram did a lot more than just that - but having studied cellular automata in some depth, it's his work with which I'm most familiar.]

Wolfram Alpha, the Computational Knowledge Engine, is apparently just that. While slinking around online, I came across a link from a woman claiming that every living human being could fit safely on the landmass of the Australian continent, with more than a quarter acre to himself or herself. Provided was a link – to a Wolfram Alpha query. I was blown away when I followed through (out of curiosity only). To screenshot the resulting page would be to do Wolfram Alpha a disservice, you’ve got to follow the link and play around with it on your own.

Suffice it to say, I will be using Wolfram Alpha again. Soon. A lot.

It knows geography, it knows population statistics, and it can divide. Some would say “big deal.” I think there’s a bit more to it than that. Whatever your feelings, at least it knows the most important answer of all.