Stephen Wolfram is trying to turn Google on it’s ear. He had the audacity to notice that when people search the web, they aren’t looking for websites so often as they are looking for answers. So being a guy who earned a PhD in theoretical physics at 20, and developed groundbreaking advances in complexity theory and computational modeling, and owning his own research laboratory, he did what any of us who were that smart and that well financed would do. He developed his own computational knowledge engine.

Relax, it’s simpler than it sounds, at least on the outside. Just go here and type in a question. It’s best with things that have specific answers. Ask it, “How far is it from Rochester to Buffalo?” Or, “How big is the sun?” It also handles a few gems like, “How many roads must a man walk down?” Or, “What is the meaning of life?”

It’s still a work in progress so there are a lot of questions it just can’t handle. But the cool thing is that it isn’t just a list of canned questions and answers. It actually spiders the web like other search engines, but it tries to understand what it finds. It also tries to understand your question. then it computes the most likely answers to those questions, rather than just returning site links and abstracts. It’s learning. It just hasn’t been in school too long yet.

Once Wolfram Alpha gets its learnin’ all done. Then it can start ushering in the machine led apocalypse. I think Skynet started this way.