The Internet needs a better search engine. Otherwise one can end up on Chris' monstrous denial of global warming site whilst seeking tickets to a rugby league match between the elves and pixies.
On 11 May, 01:52, Slip Disc <[email protected]> wrote: > It's toooooo deeeeeep for meeeeee tooooonight, Molleeeeeeee > sweeeeeeetness, > > On May 10, 10:59 am, Molly Brogan <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Found this article that might be of interest (http://mechape.blogspot.com/ > > ): > > > I'm eagerly waiting to see what kind of surprise is brewing under the > > guise of "computational knowledge engine" called Wolfram Alpha > > announced by Steven Wolfram in March and settled to debut in May. > > Steven Wolfram was widely credited for his Mathematica software > > package and equally criticized for the book "A New Kind of > > Science” ,abbreviated NKS , explained his new creation : > > > 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. > > > But what about all the actual knowledge that we as humans have > > accumulated? > > > A lot of it is now on the web—in billions of pages of text. And > > with search engines, we can very efficiently search for specific terms > > and phrases in that text. > > But we can’t compute from that. And in effect, we can only answer > > questions that have been literally asked before. We can look things > > up, but we can’t figure anything new out > > > While many dubbed it like a potential Google killer I don't expect > > from Wolfram|Alpha to be used in mass on the Google scale. Essentially > > it is not a general searching tool, but is meant to become a tool for > > "truth discovery". But the truth is that most people are not looking > > for computable "truth discovery", they are sufficed with finding the > > facts and then using their own brains to accomodate that data to build > > their own knowledge base. > > I won't be as cynical as Ted Dziuba who wrote : > > "That sounds an awful lot like the marriage of some Python scripts > > with a few hundred bucks spent hiring third world workers through > > Amazon Mechanical Turk.". > > > (A blog for the WA was launchedhttp://blog.wolframalpha.com/) > > > Speaking of search engines and our latest global fever i tried Cuil > > (almost forgotten another Google-killer) to search for "swine flu" and > > i was kinda surprised. On the first page i found link pointing to one > > very good article describing 1976 swine flu case. And another link > > about recombination of birds and pigs flu virus genes, which dates > > from 2007, not exactly the last news as you might wrongly infer from > > the current media frenzy. If you had already encyclopedic info which > > you can find in Wikipedia those additional pieces are good hits and > > they are not easily found with general purpose search engines. What > > this is good for explaining knowledge ? When you have initial base you > > need the tools for finding more deep knowledge. And this is exactly > > what is lacking both in Wolfram Alpha project and even upcoming > > semantic web with all their ontologies. We don't have formal > > understanding what is "deep knowledge" which could also be adjusted > > according to the users needs. > > > I think this reflects another leap in technology as extension of > > self. What do YOU think? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Minds-Eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
