Blog: Wolfram Alpha: 'A new paradigm for using computers and the web'

Wolfram Alpha: 'A new paradigm for using computers and the web'

Posted by Larry Dignan; March 8th, 2009@ 12:29 pm

Another week another Google killer. Last week, it was Twitter as Google killer. This week it's Wolfam Alpha. The difference with Wolfram Alpha is that it has the pedigree, engineering heft and perhaps a better mousetrap to actually live up to the billing.

Techmeme is a flutter with talk of Wolfram Alpha. Dan Farber notes that Stephen Wolfram is a scientist who has recorded a few breakthroughs and a little controversy. In a nutshell, Wolfram Alpha blends natural language, a new search model and an algorithm that takes all the data on the Web and makes it "computable." Wolfram just recently outlined his latest creation and added:

I think it's going to be pretty exciting. A new paradigm for using computers and the web.

Dan writes about Wolfram:

He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Caltech in 1979 when he was 20 and has focused most of his career on probing complex systems. In 1988 he launched Mathematica, powerful computational software that has become the gold standard in its field. In 2002, Wolfram produced a 1,280-page tome, A New Kind of Science, based on a decade of exploration in cellular automata and complex systems.

In May, Wolfram will launch Wolfram Alpha, which is dubbed a computational knowledge engine. ...

For the brainiacs in the house, Nova Spivak has a long post outlining Wolfram Alpha (it's a must read). Simply put, if Spivak's outline is only half on target Wolfram Alpha could be big.