Wolfram|Alpha and the Future of Mathematics

by Ken Orr

After a number of years of near-total dominance of the Internet search space by Google, there suddenly are a number of major new announcements. Microsoft, for example, has just introduced its new search engine called Bing, which is intended to be a more "semantic" search with greater focus on presenting the results to make them more relevant and useful to the user. And Wolfram Research has announced a tool called Wolfram|Alpha that I believe will change the face of mathematical teaching and research -- as well as science and engineering -- for perhaps decades to come.