@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

Readers may have seen Google celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Pac-Man game yesterday in the shape of Google Doodle’s interpretation of it on Google’s homepage. At first, the interactivity of Google’s logo completely passed me by until someone flagged it in an email so I decided to play the game for about half an hour (the results can be seen below). Incidentally, just as Apple has Jonathan Ive as one of its genius designers so Google has Dennis Hwang, whose work with their corporate logo everyday tells us something wonderful about the human mind: WE HAVE IMAGINATION AND IT’S EQUALLY AS ELEGIAC AS FUNCTIONAL!

Now readers should know that as kids my parents encouraged us to play lots of sports and games, including Pac-Man. Most weekdays I was in training either at dance classes, chess club or the athletics track. Weekends we spent at the beach or hiking up hills where my father would teach us about different plants and flowers and how to differentiate between cumulus and cirrus clouds. In many ways we were seriously lucky that we didn’t have a sedentary existence and they encouraged us to stimulate our intelligence and to be ACTIVE. This activity included playing handheld, card and computer games like “bomb catcher”, Nim’s Gate and various shoot-em-ups as well as what now constituent the role-playing, problem-solving scenarios of MMORGs like World of Warcraft.

That’s right, I was a sporty nerd child and I’ve never understood illogically imposed social constructs — such other people telling us we either have to be sporty, non-academic and popular OR nerdy, brainy and socially awkward. Actually, since our brains are adaptable and our limbs are flexible……..We can do whatever we want, including be sporty, nerdy and popular.

LOL, :*).

In recent years some neuroscientists like Baroness Susan Greenfield have openly criticized digital developments, games and social networks as potential sources of what they call the “infantilization of the brain” as well as encouraging what they regard as “destructive nihilism” that desensitizes us when we play these shoot-em-up or  ”be greedy, gobble everything in sight” games. It’s obvious that Pac-Man is part of the latter grouping of games, :*).

Needless to say, whilst I respect a lot of neuroscience research, there are personal experiences which mean that I don’t accept all of their theories or findings. Sometimes, some of them seem to be killjoys or fuddy-duds who weren’t lucky enough to enjoy games when they were kids and now want to prevent others from participating in some mental stimulation! In a sense the question for neuroscientists isn’t about which faculties of the brain that such games destroy or arrest, it should be questions along the lines of:

* How does it develop co-ordinated dexterity (audio-visual and manual movements of the mouse/joystick)?

* What problem solving or strategic development is happening in each game scenario?

* Where and why are the emotional chemical releases happening, and could excitement stimulus induced by such games be re-applied to make cancer sufferers (or others recovering from injury) motivated?

Let me explain this in more detail. When I play sports or computer games I can sense the adrenalin increase inside as well as whichever chemicals are associated with competitiveness. I’m rarely competitive against others but consistently competitive about improving on the way I performed before. Male testosterone is said to rise when we compete and I’d say that there’s probably female oestrogen since, within game play, we can feel very fiercely protective of our team and also defending a score line if we’re in the lead and these traits of protectionism are female. In both cases of testosterone and oestrogen release I feel motivated to DO.

Ergo, there’s every reason that sports and computer games can be appropriately used as motivation stimulus for those recuperating from illness.

Anyway, readers are probably wondering how I fared in my Pac-Man games. Below are some screenshots of my live games and it may be helpful if I provide some game tips here to reflect on how I played:

(1.) Before the game starts, survey the maze terrain your Pac-Man must navigate.

Gain some understanding of where the exits are on either side of the board. Also, notice the awkward corners, blind alleys and cul-de-sacs where you don’t want your Pac-Man to be trapped by the ghosts.

Obviously identify the corners where the big gold discs are. When your Pac-Man eats these then the ghosts will turn a royal blue color and give you an opportunity to earn lots of points by catching them.

(2.) Make good use of the three lives your Pac-Man is allocated.

Apply your survey of the game terrain and divide it into three target territories. Then prioritize which of these the Pac-Man should try to eat all the gold coins first.

Square it with yourself from the outset that you will lose Pac-Man lives. Your objective is to preserve each life for as long as possible so avoid pathways that will take you directly into the clutches of the ghosts.

(3.) Be aware of the ghosts’ positions and when they become potential targets for your Pac-Man.

Here, the main trick is to avoid any pathways where two ghosts can double-up on your Pac-Man and trap him. Therefore, when running away from the ghosts stay on circular routes without cul-de-sacs. Wherever possible, escape via the exit on either side of the board and make use of this feature intelligently so that your Pac-Man ends up on the opposite side and far away from his nemesis ghosts.

When they become royal blue ghosts, capture as many as possible since they can add up to 400 points to your score whilst a gold coin is only 10 points. Also watch out for the appearance of fruit in the maze. Eating these will add 100 points.

SO………instead of arresting my neural development as a child — like some of the neuroscientists’ today fear and expound —…..Pac-Man actually helped me develop spatial reasoning, numeracy and quantity (because each ghost, coin and fruit has a numerical value), map reading, conditioning for loss of a Pac-Man life, protectiveness of that life as far as possible and productive competitiveness (it’s fun to be able to outsmart games systems whether that’s chess, cards or Pac-Man).

:*).

As readers will see, during my games, I managed to eat all the gold coins without being caught by the ghosts, earned extra fruit and got fairly high marks. My best score was 19,220 for a single player:

For 2-players it was 18,880 (18,260 and 620) for a game in which the board was cleared once and most of those points were obtained from eating the ghosts. The 620 occurred because blue ghosts would hit the pathway of the second Pac-Man — although the one I was navigating scored 18,260 on its own.

Here’s how to have a good fun game…………………….

(i.) The game starts with your three Pac-Man lives. One game typically takes less than 5 minutes.

.

(ii.) Clear everything on the left-hand side:

If you manage to do it well — like in this example — you might have 4,500 points with 2 Pac-Man lives still remaining:

(3.)  Next clear everything in the middle and as much of the right-hand side as possible:

(4.) Now try to clear the board!

You might even have 7,750 points by the time you clear the board:

(5.) Once this happens, a new board appears and you’re still in play. The extra fruit is the strawberry as shown in bottom right corner above the cherries.

If you manage to clear this board as well………..You’ll get a pineapple in the new board. This is what I managed to do on 9,110 points with one Pac-Man life left:

Ah and before the third board appears there’s a little animation sequence you get to see which you wouldn’t if you don’t make it to the third board.

(6.) Keep playing until your Pac-Man loses all three lives. The highest score I’ve gotten so far is 19,220 which is quite good, :*).

Now the worst-case scenario is not actually being trapped or caught by the ghosts. It’s actually when your Pac-Man manages to clear the board………..except for a single gold coin! Can readers spot it?

Good luck to any readers who plan to spend half an hour today playing Google-PacMan and here’s a YouTube video to prep you before you embark on some fun and brain training!

This Internet flame between Google and China is interesting because the question has been posed previously:

·      CAN THE NATION STATE SURVIVE THE WEB?( http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalrevolution/makingofprog2.shtml )

And the Google situation is possibly the first example of an influential Web co taking on the power of a nation state, China.

Well, it’s probably helpful to keep apace of the story and online threads to-date so here are some links:

·      http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

·      http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/25/content_9368402.htm

·      http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60L1DK20100125?type=politicsNews

·      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8478005.stm

·      http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/092d5ab6-08fc-11df-ba88-00144feabdc0.html

·      http://news.cnet.com/Evidence-found-of-Chinese-attack-on-Google/2100-7349_3-6250413.html

·      http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/google’s-china-stance-more-about-business-than-thwarting-evil/

Plus here’s some context on Google’s interactions with the People’s Daily site and the current situation with Chinese authors and Google Book’s alleged infringement of their copyright:

·      http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/10/27/banned-by-google-peoples-daily-web-site-claims/tab/article/

·      http://english1.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/6813963.html

Oh and let’s include how the “Iranian Cyber Army,” who got a reputation for disabling Twitter on 17/18 December 2009, was said to be responsible for attacking Baidu this January with trojans. Baidu is China’s top search site with two-thirds of the market share and Google’s direct competitor:

·      http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/12/iranian-hackers-chinese-search-engine

So…………..it’s interesting that Google complained of an alleged security breach by CHINA-IP-ADDRESS-USING hackers on the same day (12 Jan 2010) that the Chinese’s top search site was also supposedly subjected to an attack by the “Iranian Cyber Army”.

Of course, none of the media or tech commentators have put this together yet so readers of @T are the first to even be made aware of this “oddity of coincidence”.

Could it be that there are black hat hackers (also known as “crackers” and let’s remember the word associations with “crackpots” and “crazies”) who are NEITHER American nor Chinese — or maybe include both nationalities plus some other countries — playing the US and China off each other?

Readers will note that I use the term “CHINA-IP-ADDRESS-USING HACKERS” rather than “Chinese hackers”. Just because the source address of Google’s hackers originated from a China-based server does not necessarily mean that Chinese hackers were involved. Let’s make the distinctions clear.

Ditto just because a hacking team call themselves the “Iranian Cyber Army” it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re Iranians.

After all, some people online are not who they seem: they use all sorts of pseudonyms and false information. Some might even claim their names are “Snow White”, they live in Russia and they work for the KGB or that they’re a Nigerian and have US$1 million in prize money waiting for you in a Swiss bank account that you can access if you’ll only provide all your bank details or that they can make you sexier than Casanova himself. In reality, their name is probably Ted or Ting Ting, they live in Mississippi or Manchuria and they’re a 300lb postman or housewife.

Anyway, it would be a lot more conducive if the likes of Senator Clinton and Google’s strategy team adopted a SMARTER AND MORE EXPERIENCED DIPLOMATIC approach to resolving the current scenario with China. Direct challenges about how China operates its policies on freedom of information, censorship and cyber-security are probably going to be counterproductive for resolution.

From my perspective, there are clearly language and cultural philosophy issues involved. The US government definitions of “freedom”, “censorship” and “security” aren’t the same as the Chinese government’s. Neither definitions are the absolute nor the best, imo.

Sometimes, some governments’ definitions of these three words are not even the same as its own electorate’s. For example, it’s said that censorship and anything against freedom of information doesn’t happen in Western democracies. Hmmn……….then news items like these appear:

·      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245599/David-Kelly-post-mortem-kept-secret-70-years-doctors-accuse-Lord-Hutton-concealing-vital-information.html

·      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/6735670/Dr-David-Kelly-doctors-start-legal-action-for-new-inquest.html

Even between American technology aficionados there’s an array of definitions on “freedom, censorship and security”. When a US social network decides to close a user group or remove their content that’s also an infringement of the principle of free flows of information; censorship like this happens and it’s rarely reported upon by the media.

Moreover, any form of editorialism (whether self and voluntary, imposed by journalistic regulatory associations with industry standard practices or a reflection of political affiliations) is a form of censorship.

Now another interesting perspective is that, sometimes, some Western democracies levy the “It’s government propaganda!” against other states — as if the Western democracies don’t and have never used the media for their own purposes (e.g., winning elections, concealing information from their people and pushing through policies).

Okay, here’s the thing: if there was no propaganda (or to use its preferred euphemism “PR / spin in the national or public interest”), there’d have been no wars……….EVER. PERIOD. No Crusades, no Hastings, no Alamo, no Trafalgar, no 1812, no Indochine, no World Wars, no Israel vs Palestine, no Cold War, no Iraq War, no Afghanistan, no trade wars, no etcetera etcetera.

So…………..this all leads us back to one of our pet subjects: IT’S ALL SEMANTICS, RAGAZZI.

Now begins the journey towards language, standards and conduct that’s more conducive to cyber coexistence.

Search — we seek the digital gold here, we seek it there…….It’s right under our noses and we can’t see it.

This is a most cryptic Twainism which might even have Holmes saying, “Watson, I can make neither heads, tails nor tongue of it! The young woman is a most peculiar cat! Isn’t she supposed to be Alice rather than Cheshire?” Everything will become clear after my wee segment in the documentary, folks.

I am following the FB and FF tie-up with some interest. We have a situation where, only a few weeks ago, Microsoft inked its search deal with Yahoo! Microsoft owns a minority stake in FB (bought at peak price and, seriously, with my corporate strategy hat on? Google’s acquisition of YouTube was a much much more cost-efficient and smarter move.) Plus Microsoft is indirectly hiring former Googlers, the founders of friendfeed. In any case, the blogosphere consensus seems to be that it’s all about that magic word “search” again:

· http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-buys-friendfeed-for-war-with-twitter-2009-8

· http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/090810-154010

· http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/facebook-acquires-friendfeed/

The difference with this deal is that the emphasis is on this notion of “REAL-TIME” search and real-time updates from friends which implies implicit trust. Again, what “real-time” achieves is related to speed — a scalar value — rather than relevance, accuracy or reliability which relate to search orientation and direction which derives velocity, a vector value.

So I have this Devil’s Advocate question, okay?

If I run faster will I arrive at the right destination sooner? Superficially, we may think the answer is, “Yes, of course!” However, it’s a trick question which tests our lateral thinking.

The key part of the question is “right destination”. You can run as fast as Usain Bolt. However, you may be racing towards the Grand Canyon whilst everyone else is headed for Hawaii………….

LOL.

Erick Schonfeld writes in TechCrunch about “Wall Street’s Reaction To The Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal: Not Good” but he presents only the chart for YHOO.

* http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/29/wall-streets-reaction-to-the-microsoft-yahoo-search-deal-not-good/

Any smart investor or analyst would know that it’s much better to analyze all three at once like so:

* spot on the day of search deal announcement, 29 July 2009

* 5 days leading up to 29 July 2009

* 3 month leading up to 29 July 2009 (to take into account the end May-June launch of Bing)

If we have only the YHOO graph as per Schonfeld’s opinion, the deal is under-contextualized. In fact, MSFT shares traded up 1.4 percent whilst GOOG’s fell 0.82 percent against YHOO’s drop of 12.08 percent. Over the 3-month chart we also get a better view of market activity in GOOG shares around early June (please see the blue line on the graph) whilst MSFT’s gained ground.

So that’s another example of why I read tech blogs with a SUBSTANTIAL dose of salt. Their analysis can be incomplete and of an insufficient analytical quality.

It’s how to differentiate journalists from trained corporate strategists, investment analysts and/or investment bankers. Simple things like sourcing data for insights and how the information gets spliced and diced.

Yesterday the Wolfram Alpha team announced the creation of their community:

* http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/05/18/announcing-the-wolframalpha-community/

They wrote:

“To that end we are officially launching the Wolfram|Alpha Community, which allows you to submit questions, ideas, and favorite inputs.

We already have a few static forms to contribute things such as facts, figures, and structured data or algorithms, methods, and models. The Community serves to supplement these types of feedback with a more free-form discussion among all Wolfram|Alpha users.”

Everyone knows by now I’m a firm believer in companies providing open, democratic and multilateral channels for users to provide feedback and to interact with the company. Given this opportunity, I suggested that the Wolfram Alpha team could look into providing answers to my test questions:

(1.) Who discovered radium?

(2.) Where is Atlantis?

(3.) How do we make gold from lead?

(4.) Can robots dream?

(5.) What is a sprite? [This is my trick question since ‘Sprite’ is a drinks brand as well as a type of fairy.]

(6.) When did Homo Erectus become Homo Sapien?

(7.) Why are we here?

(8.) How many light bulbs are there in the world?

(9.) Who is the Vitruvian Man?

(10.) Where is Schrodinger’s cat?

COBALT + ERIC SUGGEST I’M CLUELESS

In response to my suggestion, two users by the name of Cobalt and Eric wrote this:

“You misunderstand the point of Wolfram|Alpha I think. It is not a search engine like google nor is it a forum of expertise like answers.com.”

It is a tool that allows you to find and analyse data (i.e hard facts) from the web. It can only answer questions that have a definite answer or present data related to a subject. Things like the weight of 1g of gold or the average age in Australia. Questions with no definite answer such as the location of Atlantis and do robots dream will not and should not be answered as that is what google and the like already do.” — Cobalt

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“2. not a fact
3. not a fact
4. not a fact
6. not a fact
7. not a fact
8. not a fact
9. not a fact
10. not a fact

You don’t understand what Alpha is used for. If it’s not a fact, it can’t calculate it. Where is Atlantis? Mankind doesn’t even know if it existed, how the hell are is Alpha supposed to point it out? Can robots dream? It doesn’t create narratives, it gives you numbers in return. If you want to know why we are here, talk to a philosopher. If you want computable data, use Alpha. It couldn’t be clearer.” — Eric

MY RESPONSE: THERE’S RATIONALE IN TWAIN’S TEST

This is what I wrote in reply:

Unfortunately, Cobalt and Eric, you’re the ones who may be misinterpreting my testing approach. Stephen Wolfram, in an interview with Semantic Universe, notes that WA should be compared with the likes of Google and Yahoo! and not with HAL or Cyc, so it was reasonable for me to run WA results against Google’s and True Knowledge’s. Also let me give some context which may help.

I have a maths degree and have worked in banking, so I understand perfectly well the difference between calculable inputs to derive proofs and business models from information which is unquantifiable or simply has no quantity — such as “How is Michelle Obama related to Barack — which are questions needing answers of a qualifiable nature.

Now, Wolfram Alpha is marketed as a “computational knowledge engine” rather than a fact+figures finder/calculator so it’s supposed to be able to derive KNOWLEDGE not facts+figures alone.

Let’s tackle what logically each of my questions should have derived:

(1.) Who discovered radium —- WA gave the year but not the who (Marie Curie). Moreover, the expectation would be that the system would generate both a visual of the radium atom, some charts of radioactivity, a picture of Marie Curie and some facts+figures on the laboratory conditions of discovery.

(2.) Where is Atlantis — WA could have generated a series of maps not only of actual locations called ‘Atlantis’ (e.g. in South Africa and the US) it should also have produced geo-thermal images from archaeological expeditions that have tried to establish where Atlantis is.

(3.) How do we make gold from lead — instead of producing a “WA isn’t sure what to do with your input” the system could at least have produced some Periodic Table definitions of gold and lead, their reactivity with other chemicals and some paragraphs on historical attempts by people to try to make gold from lead.

(4.) Can robots dream — again instead of producing “WA isn’t sure what to do with your input” the system could have listed all the works of fiction by people who have actually existed (Philip Dick / Isaac Aasimov / Stanley Kubrick) who are factually connected to this phrase. After all, WA is supposed to apply NLP to derive what we mean by the inputs.

(5.) What is a sprite — WA produced a table of nutritional breakdown of Sprite the soft drink. In fact, apart from the faerie connection which is fictional entity, sprite is also a FACTUAL term used in computer graphics and the WA system failed to pick this up.

(6.) When did Homo Erectus become Homo Sapien — again WA issued a “WA isn’t sure what to do with your input” message. It’s an established FACT from anthropology and archaeology that in the evolution of Man, Homo Erectus preceded the emergence of the Homo Sapien. WA failed to produce a timeline graph of that evolution to help pinpoint whether that happened 500,000 years ago or 50,000 years ago.

(7.) Why are we here — again WA issues a “WA isn’t sure what to do with your input”. Fair enough, the system is not sophisticated enough to infer philosophical constructs yet; we are some way from truly consciously aware machines. Nevertheless, the expectation would be that some graphics of Big Bang Theory and the formation of the planets would have been produced.

(8.) How many light bulbs are there in the world — actually, this is a FACTUAL question. There are definitely numbers available of light bulb production, US expenditure on light bulbs per annum and how many light bulbs are used in each household per annum.

(9.) Who is the Vitruvian Man — unfortunately, Eric, you may not have seen sketches of Da Vinci’s masterpiece and which actually exist and are FACT-based. Instead of WA stating it “isn’t sure what to do with your input” the system should at least have generated an image of Da Vinci’s work. It could then have made the linkage of how the Vitruvian Man image has been applied in various fields of science — as clues to atomic structure as well as a reference diagram of human anatomy in medical science.

(10.) Where is Schrodinger’s cat — WA said it “isn’t sure what to do with your input”. This was the most surprising answer of all out of the questions posed. The expectation would be that the engine would at least interpret the question as one related to quantum physics and generate calculations and proofs attributable to Erwin Schrodinger. If it was even smarter it may even have done a compare/contrast with Einstein’s equations and Hawking’s postulations.

As for whether Schrodinger’s cat is a FACT or not, there are all manner of scientific phenomena that cannot be seen or established by the naked human eye (it’s somewhere else on the electromagnetic spectrum) for which generations of scientists have extrapolated proofs, corollaries and reductive provisos.

What matters in the question relating to Schrodinger’s cat is the fact that WA did not even produce an answer which said something like, “Schrodinger’s cat was a scientific experiment conceived by Erwin Schrodinger in 1935 in response to potential limitations in the Copenhagen approach and as a commentary on the ‘quantum indeterminacy or the observer’s paradox’. Schrodinger’s equation itself is applicable in wave physics, energy calculations of chemical reactions and is derived from the Hamiltonian and Poisson functions to produce:

(∂²Y/∂x² ) + (8π²/h²)(E-V) Y = 0

where Y is Schrodinger’s wave equation.

X is the position of the particle.
E is energy in Joules per second.
V is the potential energy in Joules per second.

followed by various corollaries and supporting suppositions of the type similar to those printed in this UCLA paper:

http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/schrodinger.pdf

Even as the most basic answer, instead of “WA isn’t sure what to do with your input” the simple and FACTUAL answer would have been “In the Schrodinger’s cat hypothesis, the cat is placed inside a steel chamber” followed by some of those equations Erwin Schrodinger is famous for.

All of my questions are science-based and either already have definitive scientific proofs or are established hypothesis based on scientifically-derived means. This includes “how do we make gold from lead” and the evolution of Homo Erectus into Homo Sapien.

WA is marketed as a “computational knowledge engine” and on the basis of its NLP which can semantically derive what our questions mean. If I ask “Who discovered radium?” and the answer provided doesn’t even mention Marie Curie then there’s clearly room for improvement.

As I’ve written elsewhere, WA’s entry into the search/knowledge space is great for us all as information consumers, knowledge connectors and sense discoverers.

Of course it’s fantastic that a tool like WA is made available — not just for the scientific community — but for anyone who needs to crunch any form of numbers or needs a piece of knowledge to support, quantify, qualify and visually compliment their articles (whether that’s on the fluxing orbital paths of the planets or the score lines of the World Series for the last century or projected growth of the shrimp population in the Indian sub-continent).

Nevertheless, we have to identify and be realistic about its current limitations because only then can we as consumers have genuine “computational knowledge engines” which can connect facts+figures from different disciplines, make sense of the world around us (visible, invisible and maybe as yet undiscoverable) and perhaps find solutions to global common ills.

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For me, Cobalt and Eric’s comments are interesting because both point to how users are perceiving and interpreting what these words mean:

* fact

* computational knowledge engine

* definite answers

Again, it’s relevant to semantics and the way we classify axioms via ontologies, taxonomies, folksonomies and other linguistic categoronomies (I’m coining this phrase, ha ha).

To be tic-lol (tongue-in-cheek, laugh-out-loud) I could ask, “Well, since we’re talking “facts and definite answers” how definite will Wolfram Alpha’s calculation of imaginary numbers be and has anyone actually scientifically observed them to establish them as a fact?” The reality is that imaginary numbers are philosophical constructs plucked from mathematical minds just as is most of complex algebra and even the existence or otherwise of Schrodinger’s cat (an example of quantum physicists’ paradigms), Atlantis (anthropologist-archeologists axiomatic construct of a ‘lost world”) and whether or not robots can dream!

Maybe it would have been easier if I’d asked the WA system something straightforward like, “What is the largest prime number in the universe?” or “What is the 123456789th number of π?” Ha ha. Actually not even the most powerful supercomputer has arrived at the definitive answer to the largest prime number on Earth much less the Universe! One day someone from the planet GYG is going to materialize and say that our Googol is only worth a 10 squared in their numerical scales, so the largest prime number is only 100 digits long or something!

In any case, the fact stands that the current Wolfram Alpha can’t apply its natural language processing to semantically extract that when I ask “Who discovered radium” it should give me an answer with Marie Curie in it in priority / precedence before providing me with the year of discovery.

It also can’t calculate how many light bulbs there are in the world. Clearly, some of the light bulbs in WA’s computational clusters haven’t been switched on yet to spotlight this missing information and the inputs necessary to generate an answer which would go along the lines of a simple equation like this:

L = n(A + B + C +….) + q(h1 + h2 + h3….)

where L is the total number of light bulbs in the world.

n is the number of light bulbs produced per year in each country.

A is country A.

B is country B, etc.

q is the quantity of light bulbs in each household (used and unused).

h is the number of households in each country.

By Twain deduction,  Wolfram Alpha is not yet a “computational KNOWLEDGE engine” if it can’t differentiate that a sprite is either a computer graphic term, a type of tiny glowing faerie and a brand of soft drink and can’t make the neural nets connections I’ve noted above. It would probably help the WA team to communicate and market what their service can/cannot do if they called themselves a “computational DATA engine”.

In any case, people suggesting I don’t understand the nature or the application of Wolfram Alpha is good and healthy for intellectual stimulus and keeping my ego in check. It helps me sanity-check the approach of a Twain test and whether its validity stands up.

What matters most is that it will be interesting to experience how Wolfram Alpha, Google Squared et al develop and whether one day they’ll be able to answer my 10 questions — both by deriving facts as well as extrapolating the semantic and philosophical nuances of the queries.

Now THAT’s when we may see truly intelligent and proxy-consciousness agents…………

As promised, I’ve now plugged and played with the new “computational knowledge engine” offering from Stephen Wolfram, the British-born physicist renowned for having been awarded his Ph.D. when he was just 20 and being the inventor of Mathematica, a highly regarded research tool amongst the academic scientific community.

Wolfram Alpha had a soft launch on Friday 15 May following various media “sneak previews” in late April and it’s officially live today.

As per my previous provisos (please follow links provided at end of this blog), I’ve reserved assessment on the system until today so that it’s based not on being influenced by either SemWeb hype nor journalistic ignorance, but rather objective intelligence and a mild dose of wit. Some of the articles written to-date about Wolfram Alpha have been poorly researched and re-hashes of whatever PR has been issued by the company rather than informative. This has been unhelpful for determining where and how the various search / browse / info source systems are differentiated.

This is why I decided to do my own Twain test.

I’m interested in any AI / natural language processing / Bayesian alternative / neural nets / innovative attempts to connect and make sense of the vast amount of knowledge out there (within the Internet as well as as-yet electronically unarchived sources). I’m also interested in machines which try to discern meanings, wit and nuances from our questions in an equivalent manner to how humans do naturally.

Yes, I am aware that Stephen Wolfram has provided guidance that the system is not AI. That’s clear from this Semantic Universe article:

* http://www.semanticuniverse.com/blogs-i-was-positively-impressed-wolfram-alpha.html

Now, since Wolfram Alpha is based on Mathematica I decided not to ask any straightforward numerical questions; most of us are aware by now that it can deal with statistics, indices, trigonometry, Fourier analysis, Boltzmann constants, Boyle’s gas pressures, the various constituents in organic reactions, velocity in space calculations and other scientific and quant-oriented calculations etc. fairly well.

What would be more interesting is to really test its semantic extraction, linguistic deduction and visual generation capabilities.

Below are my 10 questions accompanied by screenshots of and commentary on the results. Wolfram Alpha is being directly compared with Google’s and True Knowledge’s which are its nearest competitors in this test. Incidentally, Wolfram has apparently noted that since it’s not AI it’s unfair to compare it with HAL or Cyc but compared with Google or Yahoo. I chose True Knowledge because as was (rightfully) highlighted by some friends elsewhere, this would be an interesting case study.

TWAIN’S 10 QUESTIONS

(1.) Who discovered radium?

(2.) Where is Atlantis?

(3.) How do we make gold from lead?

(4.) Can robots dream?

(5.) What is a sprite? [This is my trick question since ‘Sprite’ is a drinks brand as well as a type of fairy.]

(6.) When did Homo Erectus become Homo Sapien?

(7.) Why are we here?

(8.) How many light bulbs are there in the world?

(9.) Who is the Vitruvian Man?

(10.) Where is Schrodinger’s cat?

These questions may seem off-the-wall, but actually they’re not.

Wolfram Alpha is being built by scientists so information on who discovered radium, the evolution of Man, the alchemy of metals, scientific expeditions and application of geothermal imaging / satellite capture of potential sites for Atlantis, the proliferation of light bulbs which are the invention of Thomas Edison and the connections to Schrodinger’s cat should be easily surfaced by the system since it is all familiar territory to scientists, machines are built in the mould and mind of their creators and before we expect Wolfram Alpha to provide us with the missing links between Marilyn Monroe and baseball (answer: Joe di Maggio) in pop culture and sports arenas — two sample areas where ‘Der Spiegel’ has already highlighted Wolfram Alpha’s current deficiencies (http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,624065-10,00.html) — it should at least be able to deal better with queries associated with its forté, science. Even if it’s not precise and no visual graphics can be generated, the algorithm should direct us to sources where we can delve further and derive some answers.

Unfortunately, as can be seen from the screenshots Wolfram Alpha gives several “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input” answers.

Hmmn………

By comparison, as an example, Google recognizes the deliberate spelling mistake I made on the search term “VEtruvian Man” and asks me whether I mean “VItruvian Man” and it provides multiple links to suitable sites where I might find the answers. Meanwhile, True Knowledge doesn’t catch the spelling mistake and only offers, “It sounds like the vitruvian man may be a human being, organisation or other legal person that I don’t know about yet,” with a suggestion that I teach the system about him and input my knowledge in via the wiki.

As for the question, “Where is Schrodinger’s cat?” I suppose I could have been mischievous and asked, “Where is Schrodinger’s car?” instead to determine whether any of the three systems understood that it’s still a question about quantum physics and the ‘quantum indeterminacy or the observer’s paradox’. In other words, where we are and how we observe relative to the cat (aka the reception of visual particles into our eyes vis-à-vis the cat — which is an analogy for atoms invisible to the naked human eye, btw) itself affects an outcome, so that the outcome as such does not exist unless the measurement is made. Ergo, there is no single outcome unless and, I’d say, UNTIL it is observed.

If I put the cat into the car then the computational search engines will get even more confused……….LOL.

As it is, Google does a fairly decent job of discerning that I mean “Schrodinger’s cat” and even when I use “car” it provides me with a link to a YouTube entitled ‘Schrodinger’s car and parallel universes’.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the screenshots of the Twain test. Yes, and everyone should be aware that no media outlets have reported any “slow script” messages from Wolfram Alpha in their tests and I found one on my second query, “Where is Atlantis?” Oops, WA……

TEST RESULT SCREENSHOTS + TWAIN CONTEXT

(1.) Who discovered radium?

This is a straightforward question and the expectation would be that a diagram of a radium atom would be generated along with a map of where it was discovered along with a picture of Marie Curie. Instead, this is what each system produced:

(2.) Where is Atlantis?

This question resulted in a “slow script” message on Wolfram Alpha before it offered a map location of Atlantis as being on the South African peninsula coast. Like True Knowledge, it didn’t make that interpretation leap to identifying Atlantis as a potential mythical construct rather than an actual geographic location.

Google does make that interpretation leap.

(3.) How do we make gold from lead?

Ideally, the generated answer should show the historical (failed) attempts by various people to turn lead into gold — including the tales from the Hermetic schools of thought on this and those during Croesus’ age.

(4.) Can robots dream?

Would Isaac Aasimov / Philip K. Dick / Stanley Kubrick be impressed by the latest machine offering which produces results like these?

Wolfram Alpha says it “isn’t sure what to do with your input”. If I’d programmed the algorithm I’d make it respond like so, “Please ask us again in the morning after we’ve had the chance to sleep on it and think about it. Thanks!”

(5.) What is a sprite?

This is my trick question since ‘Sprite’ is a drinks brand as well as a type of fairy. Interestingly, Wolfram Alpha generates what appears to be the nutritional content of a can of Sprite but fails to pick up that the query may be about a glowing elfin creature that appears at the bottom of gardens in works of fiction. Meanwhile, Google pulls in some references to the term being relevant in computer graphics as well as the faerie references.

True Knowledge goes off-base and provides us with a picture of a ferret followed by a definition of it being a drink from Coca-Cola.

(6.) When did Homo Erectus become Homo Sapien?

Again, this should have produced a straightforward answer — either in the form of a timeline chart plotting the Evolution of Man which is being pieced together by anthropologists and other scientists or in the form of a textual examination into various Jurassic, Ice, Neanderthal, Paleolithic etc. ages.

(7.) Why are we here?

The greatest Existentialist question in our search for knowledge which perplexes philosophers, physicists, Presbytarians, polemicists, party people et al alike.

(8.) How many light bulbs are there in the world?

Let’s compare WA’s answer with Google’s. Google’s first link offers some data from Wiki answers on the daily production levels of light bulbs as well as the estimated annual expenditure on them whilst WA says it isn’t sure how to use the query input — which is, effectively, what True Knowledge also says. Interestingly in the TK results, there seems to be some kind of lag and it shows answers to the previous question of ‘Why are we here?’

Perhaps the lightbulb isn’t on in the TK thought engine — LOL.

(9.) Who is the Vitruvian Man?

Here, the search / computational engines should ideally have generated an image of Da Vinci’s famous drawing within the semantic context of the query. None of the systems did. Notably, neither Wolfram Alpha nor True Knowledge auto-corrected the deliberate spelling mistake of Vitruvian Man whilst Google did spot it and auto-amend.

(10.) Where is Schrodinger’s cat?

At the very least, Wolfram Alpha should have produced some equations associated with Erwin Schrodinger’s postulations as well as their interlinkages with Einstein’s, Stephen Hawking’s and the research currently being undertaken with the Large Hadron Collider. Plus the research from the Austrian university who managed to demonstrate time-travel by sending quarks over the River Danube.

Well, that’s how my mind would work if I was trying to locate Schrodinger’s cat and its connectivity trails…..

This is what the systems gave us instead:

CONCLUSION FROM TWAIN TEST

Google isn’t going to be killed just yet with today’s launch of Wolfram Alpha. Certainly, it’s helpful to see more visual and graphical representation of computed results but, then again,……….Kosmix does that better than Wolfram Alpha, Google and True Knowledge.

Once Google Squared goes officially live we’ll probably realize and accept that Google is keeping ahead of the curve by crossing Semantic knowhow with more visual knowledge representation techniques.

Companies should avoid marketing themselves or being labelled by the media / so-called search experts as “Google killers” and paradigm shifters before they’ve actually been tested by ordinary people like me or gone live. It’s critical to manage expectations and also to be more aware of the types of random and unexpected queries which do pop up in people’s minds and that they’d like the computational and philosophical derivations to.

Since the Semantic community is aiming towards artificial agents being able to answer some of the world’s most complex questions, systems should definitely be able to either answer questions like mine or, at least, provide appropriate and meaningful links to where else I can and should seek the answers.

In any case, innovations like Wolfram Alpha and other (non) Google killers can only result in keeping Google and other tech giants on their toes and result in improved search-browse-computational-discerning-sensemaking tools for us.

Hurrah! This is gr8 for us as information consumers, knowledge connectors and sense discoverers.

Yes and any company who’d like me to road-test their systems prior to launch should contact me, :*).

*************************************

For completion, here are the two blogs I wrote last week on the today-launched Wolfram Alpha platform:

* http://www.alwaysthetwain.com/blogs/2009/05/12/wolfram-alpha-cf-true-knowledge-non-google-killers/

* http://www.alwaysthetwain.com/blogs/2009/05/10/wolfram-alpha-objective-anticipation-analysis-please/

I just read some interesting commentary from some friends which compares what they’ve seen of Wolfram Alpha with True Knowledge so I re-visited the True Knowledge site. Clearly, TK has had a redesign as these two screenshots from 2008 and 2009 will show:

The soon-to-be-live-computation WA engine is launching with the same color scheme as the old TK site as well as Primal Fusion’s choice: faded orange.

In our WA compared with TK analysis, we should be aware of and note that systems are built in the mould of their creators and their pre-orientations / pre-dispositions / accumulated pasts. This helps us to contextualize the systems, what each can do and why they’re constructed in the way they have been and are being.

The background of founders can provide us with clues on likely development and strategy of the platform.

From what I can make out from WA’s video presentation, Wolfram’s solution takes its lead from Mathematica and other natural sciences databases. In essence, it’s like taking an online calculator that can generate visuals of trigonometric function graphs (like my Casio 5100FX did when I was a teenager) crossed with elements of:

* Bloomberg + MS Excel + SAS (Statistical Analysis Software) to generate economic charts

* some biochem modeling software

That’s why ‘Der Spiegel’ (http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,624065,00.html) can identify WA’s limitations in information availability/accuracy on politics, popular culture, sports etc. It’s not the natural or default orientation of Wolfram’s team, who spend more time thinking about Fibonnaci and Feynman than Britney or Barack which is what Tunstall-Pedoe’s team does. William Tunstall-Pedoe, the founder of TK, is from a journalistic background so his natural information orientation would be towards what’s published in most papers (politics, popular culture, business, sport, etc.) and that’s the direction he would most likely direct his team efforts towards.

In the greater schema of the Web, my observation is that WA’s launch reflects the trend of commercializing and hybridizing previously closed niche academia sources like Mathematica for the masses. We also see this when, for example, Google takes software that was in architectural niches (e.g., Autocad) and creates free tools like Sketch-up and now Google Draw.

Personally, I’m in favor of this trend. The question will still arise for WA, “How do we make money from our platform?” but they seem to have some cost per embed of a WA-generated search / graph in their business model.

With TK, another important distinction is that its wiki capabilities allow for collective correction. We read the definitions / links provided and we can apply our naturally accumulated knowledge to orientate and refine the definitions / links provided, according to our semantic (aka linguistic) interpretations.

With WA, there may be less scope for collective correction. How many people are going to use pen and paper to check that the integrals and statistics generated by WA are accurate?

In due course, Google will probably release something which is a 3rd way of both: wiki, visual knowledge representation and semantically-linked facts+figures. In fact, it already does in some form with Google Finance:

and now its recently announced Public Data Search capabilities:

Moreover, contrary to misconceptions (or rather lack of proper investigation by some quarters of the Semantic and journalistic space) Google is interested in and has been actively building teams with semantic knowhow for several years.

I wrote a lengthy, objective and well-researched article on this topic last year. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of posting this article on a certain SemWeb platform which I’d entrusted with the safekeeping / stewardship of my and my friends’ content on its public platform. Instead of reciprocally honoring that act of trust, said SemWeb platform’s coding was so awry and poorly architected that they deleted 8 months worth of our collaborative content, including that particular post examining Google’s interests in the semantic space.

Therefore, my hard work on the issue is lost indefinitely — despite the CEO’s non-performance of his own promise to restore our content.

This is personally annoying since my article cast a contextual light on whether any of these Semantic offerings springing up are genuinely paradigm-shifters and “Google killers”. They cannot be Google killers if the basic assumptions about Google not being actively involved in utilizing Semantic knowhow and tools is either fundamentally wrong or flawed.

Alas, I cannot now reproduce that article and the links which I found about Google hiring teams from known Semantic Web-related techco’s like CYC. However, I can point to some articles from Read/Write/Web this January 2009 and from eweek.com in the same month which point towards Google having and progressively incorporating semantic search features:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_semantic_data.php

http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/google_search/yes_google_is_doing_semantic_search.html

http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/google_and_semantic_web/google_ceo_hints_at_semantic_contextual_search.html

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/161890/semantic_search_could_secure_googles_future.html

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/04/just-facts-fast.html

As I note, I wrote my article last year — May 2008 — several months before R/R/W or eweek did. That SemWeb platform, in their inconsiderate and wholesale deletion of users’ content, is responsible for my article not being available for others to use as a public and democratizing information source that would put into perspective whether any SemWeb offering is a paradigm-shifter or “Google killer”.

From what I’ve road-tested in the SemWeb space to-date, none of them are.

Google remains ahead of the curve both technically as well as the way in which they service and market to users. Certainly some of the businesses and their tools could be better integrated but, nonetheless, the key components remain technically more interesting than those offered by wannabe “Google killers” to-date.

Specifically wrt Wolfram Alpha, I’m sticking with my position as stated previously: I reserve proper assessment of it until I can plug+play it myself, objectively.

This is because all kinds of people have hyped WA or tried to make me believe that “Google doesn’t do semantic search” (their words) — despite me providing analysis which contradicts their convictions and competitive intelligence insights.

If I have a positive / negative perspective on Wolfram Alpha it will be based on my own independent and objective analysis (ok also humorous), and informed with previously accumulated, distilled and connected observations of the Semantic space rather than anyone else’s spin / misinformation / ignorance.

PERSONAL NOTE

I would never trust that SemWeb platform with my content again. At least on my own blog I know my information isn’t suddenly going to be deleted because of some irrational / small-minded / inconsistent / undemocratic whim of someone else.

Most importantly, I am not giving any licensing rights to the SemWeb platform over my content (original articles, images, comments, business models etc.) and their associated copyright for the SemWebco’s use or commercial exploitation. Frankly, their actions showed themselves to be unworthy of my trust and underlined how important it is to have ownership of your content and credit assignation for it.

Their Big Brother policies and breaches of user privacy were also not very appealing as a user-member.

All-in-all, I’m glad I don’t buy into that CEO (words and actions). He’s the same guy who insisted Google isn’t into semantic search, searching with Google is like “looking for a needle in a haystack” and who hypes up supposed “Google killers”. His radar’s way off.

Clearly, mine’s more perceptive, calibrated and spot on.