This video was literally what was going through my head as I watched this film. Only there is much much more to the similarities than this:

This week a new website launched called Wolfram Alpha. At first glance you may assume it’s another search engine but you’d be wrong, it’s described as a “knowledge engine” and some are saying that it could kill search engines or at least searching as we know it. Here’s a very impressive video of what you can do with it:

Click here (note: Doesn’t seem to work in Firefox)

It’s all very impressive from a computer science point of view, the fact that it is even possible is amazing. This could become the “go-to” tool for online users who want to answer questions or are doing research. If what you’re looking for is knowledge based and you can form it into a question that can be answered, chances are this offers a much better experience than google.

Some website content owners are already calling foul. They, of course, want people to visit their websites for the information and not have some artificial intelligence that scours the internet and compiles all the data. But as you can imagine Wolfram Alpha is very secretive about how it actually all works.