WolframAlpha – Making the Web Computable

Remember in Star Trek, when crew members aboard a space ship were able to simply say, “Computer,” and then ask the computer some question about a planet, civilization, or fellow crew member? In reply, Computer would rattle off a bunch of information, some bits more useful than others. It was all very cool and futuristic.

Well, thanks to WolframAlpha.com, that’s almost not “futuristic” anymore.

The main difference between what we are calling “Web 2.0″ (the internet as we have known it over the last few years) and “Web 3.0″ is the integration with current technology of databases in ways that are useful and meaningful to us, also known as the Semantic Web (also see a video, here).

In the video below, Stephen Wolfram explains his new “computable knowledge engine.” You need to be a little smarter than I am to think of intelligent queries for this search engine right now, and it’s so new that everyone is still in the “let’s-play-with-this-and-see-what-it-can-do” phase, rather than the “oh-cool-this-is-going-to-save-me-a-lot-of-time-!” phase that it will be in shortly after we all figure out what it can do, and after it’s beefed up a little. But keep an eye on this one. It promises to be a key player in the development of the web.

Click to view video – Video will open in a new window.

Click to view video – Video will open in a new window.

 

Also see:

• About WolframAlpha
• #WolframAlpha Discussion on Twitter
• Mashable: Five Things that WolframAlpha Does Better (And Vastly Different) than Google