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The Future We Were Expecting?
While information started flooding out soon afterward, a special nod to Abbygal for sending a link to this excellent overview of Wolfram Alpha this past Thursday. If you haven't already read about it or seen some other overview, this is an excellent introduction.

As it was rolling through it dawned on me that this is what we expected computers to do for us when we were all generally ignorant of the state of the art. We've spent so many years adapting our thought processes to match the simple, mini-step logic and literalism our relatively primitive computer programs required... that I almost didn't recognize some of the first signs of the computer I expected to have when pop culture showed us some popular visions of the future when I was a child growing up in the Space Race 1960s.

Admittedly, it's just another step in the process, but I really like the feel of this and the general sense of how it's developing.

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