Stephen Wolfram builds the Star Trek voice computer, or at least the precursor to it, with www.WolframAlpha.com

Have you ever googled something and thought “If only I could just ask the computer this question instead of typing in keywords, sifting through pages and pages of crap and finally find THE ANSWER” buried in one of the web pages?” There has got to be a better way. Every science fiction computer has a natural language interface. Heck, even KITT from the new (and old) Knight Rider is a smart enough A.I. that his partner Michael Knight can ask him questions.

Well, I’m psyched to find out that Stephen Wolfram (head of Wolfram Research) has publicly announced WolframAlpha, a “computational knowledge engine” that can interpret your questions, go find the answers and then tell you the answer (or answers) to your question. This could potentially be a huge leap forward towards the realization of those science fiction characters. I can’t wait to see how well it works and to begin using and playing with it.

Thanks to Dave McClure for the link to this page by Nova Spivack.

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