attentionScan - more signal, less noise

This could change everything

There are two ways to get at data. First, you can access data by looking it up: this is what database programs do. Or, if you want to get fancy, you can compute the answer to get the data that you're looking for. This is how most spreadsheets work when there's a formula in a cell. The first approach requires storing pre-existing information while the other approach just needs input to create new data.

For the most part, search engines such as Google are of the "lookup" variety. They have a huge index of web pages and when you type in a search they try to match the keywords in your search to pages that match the best in the database. Yes, each search engine differs in the dimensions of how you enter the data (natural language or keyword queries) and each uses different algorithms to determine how relevant the search results are to your query, but when all is said and done, they're all basically the same.

Enter WolframAlpha.

Set to launch in May of 2009, WolframAlpha is the brainchild of Stephen Wolfram, the genius (credentialed, in fact...he's been the recipient of a MacArthur Grant) behind the ubiquitous Mathematica program and author of A New Kind of Science, a controversial book in which he posits that the entire universe is basically the outcome of simple programs that build on each other. WolframAlpha is also an entirely new way of looking at search.

According to Wolfram's blog posting announcing the coming site, WolframAlpha combines both the work he's done on Mathematica and the thinking that went into A New Kind of Science:

I had two crucial ingredients: Mathematica and NKS. With Mathematica, I had a symbolic language to represent anything—as well as the algorithmic power to do any kind of computation. And with NKS, I had a paradigm for understanding how all sorts of complexity could arise from simple rules.

Basically WolframAlpha combines the power of transforming problems into symbolic language (created for Mathematica) with the philosophy that simple algorithms can build on each other to create complex behaviros. What this means in practice is that the new search engine will not just look up the answers to our queries (like search engines now) but will rather compute the answers to those queries.

So what? Well, it means the difference between submitting a query such as "average rainfall rockies US west" when you're trying to figure out the average rainfall west of the Rocky Mountains and asking instead being able to ask questions like "What's the average rainfall west of the Rockies?"

If it works, it'll work like we've all imagined computers should work (but never have).

The most interesting thing to me about WolframAlpha is that it has the capability to create new knowledge, not just look up things that have already been thought of. As Wolfram himself states in his blog, today "we can only answer questions that have been literally asked before. We can look things up, but we can’t figure anything new out."

That's why this could change everything. Because instead of just reporting, WolframAlpha is about connecting. It's about serendipity that arises out of asking questions that have never been asked before. It's about discovering new things. It's about a new way of thinking about how knowledge works.

And that's pretty cool.