A couple of weeks ago, I did a one and a half hour long phone interview with my favorite computer scientist, Stephen Wolfram. He’s about to launch a new web product called Wolfram|Alpha. It’s a little like a search engine, but unlike an old-style search engine, it does deep background computations in order to calculate the answers that you might actually be looking for.
My written article based on our interview went live today in a cool new webzine called H+ Magazine . H+ is edited my no less a cultural hero than my old pal R. U. Sirius of Mondo 2000 fame. Nuff said!
Go read the article online: “Wolfram|Alpha: Searching for Truth.”
To further sweeten the infodump, Stephen taped our phone conversation and edited it down to a 65 minute podcast which H+ Magazine has posted as well. You can click on the icon below to access this podcast via .
April 6th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Readers interested in some initial thoughts on Wolfram|Alpha might find my blog on the subject of interest. It’s at
http://www.alpha-tips.com/alphatips/blog
Thanks!
–David (the blog’s author…)
April 6th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Awesome! Please let us know when Wolfram|Alpha becomes available. We’re getting closer to having a Multivac 🙂 http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html A short story by Asimov about a machine that answers people’s questions. The machine goes bonkers when someone asks it if the second law of thermodynamics can be reversed (to prevent the universe eventually ending). When I first read it I thought of Google, but this Wolfram|Alpha engine is much closer to the idea.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Wow, this is really interesting stuff.
It makes me think of the way someone like George Soro’s took the ideas of Karl Popper and Charles Sanders Peirce and turned them into a way to track and manipulate the stock market.
But here Wolfram is taking taking his own ideas from NKS and making a potentially huge internet success.
Actually there probably is some connection between Poppers ideas of falsification and Wolfram|Alpha…
April 7th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I listened again. I love it when Wolfram asks you.
“What’s your favorite Spacecraft?” !!
and then
“What’s your favorite Chemical?” it’s so funny!!
Of course Google already does some of the science features in Alpha he discusses,
but I think some people just don’t know about them. eg the calculator
April 7th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Search engines need to understand language.
Its hard to get what you are looking for these days,
I get irrelevant blog/forum entries or a website trying
to make me buy something i don’t want.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:59 am
The link is dead… so is the podcast link.
April 14th, 2009 at 1:30 am
hplusmagazine gets an Fminus. Dead domain.
April 14th, 2009 at 6:58 am
NH and Ldo, hplusmagainze and the podcast ARE live. The Wolfram|Alpha team did a mass emailing mentioning our article yesterday, resulting in a huge surge of visits. So the server was swamped. But if you try again, you should have success.
May 20th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
I was really exited about this project, read everything wolfram said, but I tried it and did not find anything innovating or interesting, and also can not imagine how are they going to do something interesting with it (except with tons of works). What do you think, can you comment on something that you find interesting about the website?
June 5th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
I was considerably contented to divulge this web-site.I wanted to thanks in behalf of your facts in the instantaneous of this wonderful peculiarity to!! I certainly enjoying every bantam trace of it and I partake of you bookmarked to into unique bushy-tailed possessions you blog post.