Wolfram/Alpha or the end of the world as we know it
While reading the preface to the book “A New Kind of Science” (NKS), I was listening to REM’s song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” How appropriate to coincide with the official launch of a project of the book’s author, Stephen Wolfram.
I cannot say that I was following this project from the beginning (back in 2000), but I know it is going to generate more news now that it was officially launched yesterday (may 15). This post is a short recap of information that can be found at the project’s website.
The project is called Wolfram/Alpha and it is a computational knowledge engine. With its operations headquarters in Illinois, its objective is to “make all systematic kinowldge immediately accessible and computable for everyone.”
At launch it had more than 10 trillion pieces of data, 50,000 types of algorithms and models and linguistic capability for thousands of domains.
The project is the result of Wolfram’s leadership. To reach this point, after almost 30 years, two previous developments had to take place. Mathematica and NKS.
Mathematica is, according to its own definition, “a computation and visualization system, development environment and deployment engine. Used throughout diverse technical fields, including engineering, science and financial analysis.” Together with NKS, the book that explained the paradigm that made it possible to imagine the very same possibility that Wolfram/Alpha could exist, they are the consequence of the singular vision of this 49 year old ant his Wolfram Research team.
Wolfram/Alpha website claims that the system has the capability to understand free-form input. Presented as both as a technology and a platform, we’ll soon be introduced to developer APIs.
It is indeed a fresh approach to science and knowledge in general. If you want to learn more you can visit its site at http://www.wolframalpha.com. A free online version of NKS can be found at http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html