News Commentary: Wolfram Alpha – Game Changer

On Sundays, I pick a news story that I found particularly interesting and relevant to Information Professionals to comment on. This is a stunning example of that trend.

It is truly a rare day that something completely new concerning the Information Age is added to our world.  This week marked the launch of Wolfram | Alpha.  [Ed note: The pipe (|) is part of the official name] This is the latest creation of Dr. Stephen Wolfram.  He is a world renowned computational physicist who created Mathematica.  As many of you know, Mathematica is pretty much the universal language of computer based math, physics, and science throughout the research, academic, and R&D worlds.  Wolfram | Alpha is his next leap in creation. This how they describe it on their site:

Today’s Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.  You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer.   Based on a new kind of knowledge-based computing…

Google is the world’s best search engine.  Wolfram Alpha is defiantly not a search engine as many in the media have characterized it as.  Search engines, by their name, allow you to find information that already exists somewhere on the Internet.  While some of the information that you uncover with Google may be unknown to you, it is always historic in that someone or something has already created it.  Wolfram Alpha creates knowledge.  That’s right – you put a question into it that is possible to determine with math and it finds the data or data feeds needed to calculate it and it reports a new answer just for you.  The query need not have ever been done before to produce a result.  Don’t take my word only for it.  The below story is a terrific introduction to the idea.

CBSnews.com: Wolfram Alpha Does What Google Can’t

Alpha is not Google. It does a very different thing: It computes the answers to questions that may not ever have been asked. It also takes hard data and presents it in its own way. Google, by contrast, primarily directs you to Web pages where other people have already created answers to questions. It’s a very different type of service, even if there is a fair bit of overlap when you’re looking up static information, like the structure of a molecule.

 

Wolfram Alpha could become an amazing tool for searching not the Web of pages, but rather the Web of data. It’s smarter than Google in many ways, if not as comprehensive. It could become a worthwhile destination for anyone who needs a concrete answer, providing the question can be asked in a way Alpha understands.

Google News Summary

I was tipped off to this story by Leo Leporte.  He was able to interview Dr. Stephen Wolfram on launch day.  I highly recommend all of his journalism, but this interview is especially relevant to our community. 

The easiest way to know a happening in the InfoWorld is disruptive is that experts have trouble explaining it or boxing in its limitations.  If you cannot find the edges of something in the Information Age, you should respect it.  Just as the web placed communications and information into the hands of laymen, cameras made the world photographers, and IPods created a world of DJs, Wolfram Alpha will permit anyone to conduct scientifically verifiable computational research.  Where that will lead is anyone’s guess.  I am sure though that out there is a smart graduate student who is about to become the next Einstein as his mental ideations get transformed into actionable, reportable, confirmable findings on the way a new facet of our universe works.  I can’t wait.

Information Professionals everywhere need to learn about this new innovation.

What do you think about this story?  Is it the transformational event that I suggest it is?  Are there other stories like this out there? Please share your ideas with us.

P.S. By the way, the picture accompanying this story is the results from my use of Wolfram Alpha to determine the distance between Mars and Pluto this morning.  I put my query in there and got one number.  Amazingly, it was corrected for their current orbital positions based upon the date.  I put the same question in Google and got tons of tables, but then had to drill down to find what I wanted.  As you might guess, most of the Google results were the distance between Earth and those planets.  All of Google’s results were historic and would have not been correct for today.  Really fascinating stuff!  I am sold.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for May 31, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .

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