An invention that might alter the internet forever

The fledgling system, Wolfram Alpha, revealed at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first approach in the direction that many consider to be the Internet's Holy Grail – a massive store of information that understands and replies to ordinary questions in the same way a person does.

Even though the system is still new, it has already generated massive interest and excitement with technology enthusiasts and internet aficionados.

Computer experts think that the new search engine will an extraordinary jump in the advancement of the internet. Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, advised that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as significant as Google. "It is really impressive and significant," he wrote. "In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose."

Tom Simpson, of the blog www.convergenceofeverything.com, said: "What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organizing internet? Possibly... I think this could be big."

Wolfram Alpha will not only provide a straight answer to queries such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will additionally produce a organized page of related information – all accurately sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and graphs.

The real ingenuity, however, is in its ability to sort things out "on the fly", according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in "10 flips for four heads" and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the precise current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.

Dr. Wolfram, an award-winning physicist who is equations.

"I've wanted to make the knowledge we've accumulated in our civilization computable," he said last week. "I was not sure it was possible. I'm a little surprised it worked out so well."

Dr. Wolfram, 49, who was educated at Eton and had completed his PhD in particle physics by the age of 20, added that the premier of Wolfram Alpha later this month would be only the beginning of the project.

"It will understand what you are talking about," he said. "We are just at the beginning. I think we've got a reasonable start on 90 per cent of the shelves in a typical reference library."

The engine, which will be free to use, works by drawing on the knowledge of the internet, as well as non-public databases. Dr. Wolfram said he predicted that about 1,000 employees would be needed to keep its databases current with the latest discoveries and information.

Wolfram Alpha has been designed with professionals and intellectuals in mind, so its knowledge of popular culture is, at the moment, comparatively weak. The term "50 Cent" resulted in "absolute horror" in tests, for example, because it confused a discussion on currency with the American rap artist. For this reason alone it is unlikely to provide an immediate threat to Google, which is working on a similar type of search engine, a version of which it launched last week.
"We have significant amount of popular culture information," Dr Wolfram said. "In some senses popular culture information is much more shallowly computable, so we can figure out who's related to who and how tall people are. I fully expect we will have lots of popular culture information. These are linguistic terrors because if you place in books and music a much of the names clash with other concepts."

He added that to help with that Wolfram Alpha would be utilizing Wikipedia's popularity index to decide what users were likely to be interested in.

With Google now one of the world's top brands, worth $100bn, Wolfram Alpha has the ability to become one of the biggest names on the planet.

Dr. Wolfram, however, did not rule out working with Google in the future, as well as Wikipedia. "We're working to partner with all possible organisations that make sense," he said. "Search, narrative, news are complementary to what we have. Hopefully there will be some great synergies."
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