Making the World Computable
Stephen Wolfram announced that his new "not a search engine," Wolfram/Alpha, will premiere in May. This software package will enable users to query it, like Google, but instead of running a search for lists of appropriate web pages, it will calculate the answer to a query using information extracted from web pages.
I've written an essay giving background on Wolfram and his career. In it, I discussed the possibility that the development of Wolfram/Alpha may speed up the development of true AI. It is posted on ScribD.
Here is Wolfram's official announcement on his blog, including his own description of Wolfram/Alpha.
