Wolfram computes it all
Stephen Wolfram is promising “A new paradigm for using computers and the web.” It involves “a mixture of many clever algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and what probably amount to some serious theoretical breakthroughs.” He doesn’t lay it out explicitly, but says “…armed with Mathematica and NKS I realized there’s another way: explicitly implement methods and models, as algorithms, and explicitly curate all data so that it is immediately computable.”
Wolfram is very very very very very smart. No one doubts that. He’s smart enough that he would not be posting and hyping this site unless there’s something there. I don’t understand it, but, frankly I’m looking forward to it.
The site is called WolframAlpha, and it opens in May.
I dunno, sure Mathematica is great software, and NKS is an enormous book, but tooting your own horn is rather self-serving (selling Mathematica and the brand he has built up around it).
I read Stephen’s blog post about Wolfram Alpha,
and it is indeed a bit mysterious. And I agree – he is one of the smartest scientists who was also able to make quite successful business model with his incredible Mathematica. I used symbolic math even before Mathematica, but when it came – it changed the horizon of symbolic computations.
But, when it comes to semantic web, knowledge representation and reasoning on the web, I have serious doubts that his NKS (New Kind of Science) could make a breakthrough. By no means it is hidden criticism of NKS and Stephen’s ability to be a true trail blazer.
I have a kind of gut feeling that the real breakthrough will come through simple yet revolutionary discoveries. Imagine, for example, if we could make ALL websites on the web (i.e. their webmasters) to post some semantic data NOW. Or at least to start doing so on a mass scale. Whatever the format: RDF, RDFA or microformats – but if someone would invent how to make the ball rolling – these simple things could bring far deeper change of the web than any new scientific paradigm…..
But, I look forward to see what WolframAplha will show in May. And I look with great excitement and quite impatiently …
Mirek
[...] am referring to the Wolfram Alpha … David mentions it here, noting that Stephen Wolfram is “very very very very very smart”. Coming from David, that is an automatic signal to pay [...]
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[...] Joho The Blog: Wolfram computes it all [...]
Keep up the good work!
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