Techcrunch featured an interesting article about a web service tipped to change the way we search the web for answers to factual questions. Wolfram Alpha is to launch in May 2009, and is described as a computational knowledge engine. It uses a natural language interface, so you can ask questions using everyday terms, and it "knows about" a variety of fields of knowledge.
It's very different from Google because it's not looking up answers and giving you a long list of possible matches. It's actually computing the answer, possibly to a question no-one else has asked it, making inferences and combining information to synthesise a result.
The writer, Nova Spivak suggests the system could never offer career or relationship advice, because this is by its very nature "fuzzy" - there's no single right answer. But it is certainly possible that information to support career decision making and job hunting could be processed by a tool like Wolfram Alpha. It could for example provide a fantastic user friendly way to access labour market intelligence (LMI), using data about starting salaries, occupational areas which are expanding/contracting, qualification or professional entry requirements for specific occupations in different countries. LMI has been notoriously difficult for the everyday user to access, and even professional advisers and counselors don't always find it easy to locate detailed, accurate, uptodate information about the labour market for their clients. Now more than ever, career decisions need to be based on best information, not gut instinct or best guesses or hunches. Making the wrong decisions about education choices could prove costly for those who get it wrong .
This tool is receiving a lot of attention online at the moment, and once it launches in May 2009, it will be very interesting to see how it may be able to support those researching career ideas!
