How Much of the World’s Knowledge Can Be Made Computable?
That’s what mathematician, author, and entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram aims to find out with a new web-based search engine called Wolfram Alpha (www.wolframalpha.com), due for beta release later this month. Based on the belief that anything that can be expressed as a set of numbers is a computable problem, Wolfram Alpha returns search results for queries based on computations gleaned from an ever-increasing array of numerical databases on a host of subjects. According to the Boston Globe’s Hiawatha Bray, Wolfram Alfa then uses these numbers to generate practical information for scientists, business people, or anyone else.
Sounds like yet another advance for Web 3.0, the semantics web, in which computers don’t merely present or process information to or for humans, but can interact with that information and “think” about it, much like humans do. Being able to crunch numbers, however, is one thing: being able to crunch non-numerical data like raw content is quite another. Can content be made computable? That’s the real trick technologists must solve before Web 3.0 can become a reality.
By Robert Pothier