As people might imagine, I’m pretty busy right now getting Wolfram|Alpha ready for launch. But yesterday afternoon I took a few hours out to give an early preview of Wolfram|Alpha at Harvard.
There were lots of interesting questions and comments, particularly about the broader intellectual context of Wolfram|Alpha.
There’s really a very long and rich history behind the kinds of things we’re doing with Wolfram|Alpha.
And in fact, a little while ago my staff took some notes of mine and assembled a timeline about the history of “The Quest for Computable Knowledge.” I think it makes interesting reading; there’s quite a diverse collection of elements, some very well known, some not.
I’ve always been particularly struck by Gottfried Leibniz’s role. He really had pretty much the whole idea of Wolfram|Alpha—300 years ago.
At the end of the 1600s he came to believe that somehow there must be a way to mechanize the resolution of all human arguments.
He imagined that one could represent human discourse using logic and mathematics. Then he imagined that one could use a machine to work out answers from this—and in fact he even built some small mechanical calculators himself.
He also realized that to provide raw material for his mechanization it would be necessary to assemble lots of knowledge. So he worked hard to get libraries constructed, and to invent systems for organizing them.
Of course there were some elements missing. But Leibniz really had the right basic idea.
It’s just that you can’t build a Wolfram|Alpha with manuscripts and clockwork. And in fact, I think now is pretty much the first time in history that technology and ideas have reached the point where Wolfram|Alpha is at all practical.
Of course, it’s still a lot of work… and it’s time for me to get back to that now!
(By the way, Leibniz actually went further in his thinking about what might be knowable—and if you’re interested in seeing more, I happened to talk about this a couple of years ago.)
One aspect seems to be always forgotten.
Education. I try to create excitement/ curiosity for my 11year old daughter and we “only listened” to your webcast.
But due to time difference she fell asleep after she told me she wants to play with it and she is interested to find out how to apply it to her daily life.
So we are nearly there - my wish is that you keep your wonderful tool open for everybody to play with and I hope that we can lay the seeds to “educate” our next generation with the best knowledge and hopefully with the best tools.
Please include the younger generation when analyzing user experience…
I am very interested in your work and I can´t wait to use it. I see how much brain work must be behind that. Respekt!
Looking forward to see how I can integrate results via an API???
Am thinking of robotics/drone applications.
A fascinating initiative; but ambitious as it seems it needs to set itself higher goals, I would suggest. Wolfram still sppears to believe that Universal Computation is some kind of maximum or upper limit to the ‘expressive power’ or degrees of freedom of a system. This is not so.
In particular by combining Fuzzy Logic (or Vague Set theory as Russell called it) with Transfinite Set theory, one can show that systems or processes can have expressive power equivalent to ’surreal numbers’ (ref e.g. Conway, on Numbers & Games). These can be approximated using current computing (for example with ANN’s) but not accurately modeled, for which we need quantum computing.
A visual or physical implementation of such a transfinitely complex system is I believe the basis of our spacetime. My current favourite is a Transfinite Geometric Network, which is a network connected by geometric figues (arcs, helices, etc) with information transfer dependent on the geometric configuration(s). Such a network can emerge fomr an underlying system I call Collisional Automata.
Wolfram needs to include the ‘possible truths’ generated by such transfinite systems if he is to achieve the goals I believe he has.
Good Day to all of you as eager as me waiting for the launch (and, of course, as well to those who aren´t. If they are any)
However, I just would like to add my humble “two cents”, first a big and loud Congratulation for even getting so far with WA to all of it´s minor and major developers. If it will just be able to do the half of everything we all expecting from it right now : WOW ! (and, truly : I think it will)
and second : I do not fully agree with “it will make us lazier”;-)
I suppose it´s like cheat sheets in school. You always need to have a clue what to look up and to necessarily scribble down on your tiny sheet. Actually, most of the times you prepared a cheat you will not need it
So figuratively, for WA it´s : always needing to know what to ask for implies some kind of “essential basics” (I mean :beyond the ability to read and write)
And for the “discoveries” I assume they will just occur on a somehow higher level than on other (in loss for a better word) search engines.
But probably only for people like me (not native tongues) and then by “language accident”
I hope we will soon see a multi- language version (preferably a german one…..)
Kind regards and have a nice day
A tool to target knowledge without tons of fumbles….a dream.
Look very much forward to the launch.
I like the core notion.
Leibnitz surely was a great scholar but I believe not more than Plato. Surely 2 more scholars mostly De Caurt & Spinoza contributed greatly to the visualization of the reason research & it’s manifestation. A lot is known to prominent scholars in different separate fields but too few is evident in equations -how one field corresponds with others & maybe interpreted. I do not believe it’s possible to enlarge greatly the scholar community via Wolfram|Alpha engine (& any other, for the phenomena of man has not changed for 40.000 years). But we all need & wait from Steven Wolfram & his engine a sort of modern logical machine -like Dm.Mendeleev’s table of Chemistry elements -wholesale & approved system of our intellectual heritage -Different Forex instruments do not predict & even do not describe currency rates & dynamics..but now we even do not know what they reflect in what scales & conditions, how they interact each other. If Wolfram|Alpha truely works it shows us those conventional rules in system, it’s practical truth & evidence.Great Am.Scholar William James, 1909 approved the Universal character (evidence)of Human’s mentality. Now the problem to overcome for Search Engine as Wolfram|Alpha is to revise our intellectual heritage in a whole-ideas, books, great names, PC progs & all soft, inventions, true copy-rights, etc-describe, compare, show in it’s raw, computate, visualize. Best wishes from Moscow, De’min L.Igor
Alpha is a great effort Stephen. But you are thinking about language the wrong way.
Language is not just a “handle” on what is known. “Everyday language” is not a “very imprecise way to specify questions or ideas” (as you say in your talk, http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/ultimateknowledge)
Historical linguistics leads you that way. But you must not follow.
Instead we must understand that natural language is exactly the engine to computate all that is knowable, you are looking for!
It is almost funny. You see the randomness produced by your automata as evidence they are universally powerful, but continue to assume the randomness/ambiguity we see in natural language is a flaw!
If you can think of music as a computational engine to generate patterns (”Wolfram Tones”), why not language? I’m sure that is what it is. And as the “irreducible” randomess of natural language patterns indicate, it is likely to be the universally powerful computational engine you are looking for.
INTERESTING…..WE KNOW THAT ASPECTS OF “REALITY” CHANGE IN THE COURSE OF TIME, AND ARE THEREFORE DYNAMIC.WHAT DOESNT CHANGE IS THE HOWLING OF THE MOB, WHO CARE NOT FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE, REASON ETC. ; TO PUT THE DATA TO USE ON A LARGE SCALE WILL BE PROBLEMATIC
What a wonderful summary of computable knowledge, it’s really all there! Brittannica, Wikipedia, Vannevar Bush’s memex, Ramon Lull’s Ars Magna… Apart from François Dongier’s and Bill Callahan’s suggestions, I’d also add DBpedia and Freebase, which extract data from Wikipedia (and other sources in the case of Freebase) and store it in a semantic, structured form.
Whew..!!!
i have Jusst recently ’stumbled’ luckily onto Mathematica, & now keeping my eyes peeled fer Wolfram Alpha…!
Can’t put my excitement in words..!
My Heart-felt congratulations for Dear Mr.Wolfram & his talented friends for their massive-yet-focussed effort to Design, Nurture, & Develop Such Gems as Mathematica…
And i wish Wolfram Alpha would also prove to be a very interesting & useful endeavour..!
Cheers..!!!
Good luck to you - hope it all succeeds ……………. no such thing as too much knowledge.
Although it was long time ago, but both from mathematics and from philosophy, the good old Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz were taught with “tz” at the end. My opinion, if Plato is still Plato and not Plao, then Leibnitz should remain Leibnitz. I wonder what will Alpha spit out for the “tz” version.
With the introduction of W|A, it is easy to envision a world of independent computers collaborating in a distributed network, each responsible for a Knol (or other unit of knowledge) such that W|A would only be limited by the number of processors it was distributed over.
But I realize now that I am typing this, with the imminent release of the new “Teminator” movie, that perhaps THIS is the origin of SkyNET!!
Stephen truly is one of the great THINKERS of our time, and I am tremendously inspired and honored to be so “near” via this blog and the release of W|A into the world.
imho, the magic in computers is the person(s) behind them.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” — Arthur C. Clarke
can’t wait to see more of your magic. thank you for the preview and the overview of your dream machine …
I have already set my homepage as W/A .And waiting for you !!!
I have several comments.
First, I love observing the wackos that have come crawling out of the woodwork. They haven’t seen W/A yet, but they “know” what Wolfram is doing, or has done, wrong. All I have to say to that is “Uh-huh. And where is*your* interactive, online knowledge visualizer and correlation?” Oh. I thought not. Why don’t you at *least* wait until you see what it actually does before you start pretending you know what it (or Wolfram himself) *should* have done? At least that way you won’t be embarrassing yourselves quite so harshly. You know. Conceptualizing from objective facts, rather than from your own fevered imaginations.
Second, my impression here is of something that might accelerate the rate at which I can absorb concepts by (a) gathering what might often be far-flung data and relationships into a coherent construct, and (b) literally visualizing it with charts and so forth so that my understanding can move ahead by leaps and bounds, instead of individual words. Now, the fact is, I’ve not seen it yet either, but that is what it sounds like thus far to me. If it does these things, I’ll be just beside myself with approval.
Lastly, I echo the sentiment of the person who hopes for an API; it would be truly lovely to be able to access the system — at least feed it queries — in an automated manner. You’d probably have to throttle such a thing, of course, and recovering the costs of such use are a serious issue, but still… direct access to this kind of tool seems like it would be a real boon to many types of information processing systems and educational systems as well. Having said that, if it’s web only, well then web it is. Beats the living whatever out of not having it at all.
Dear Friends,
Since February I heard about Wolfram Alpha project and I am following as much as possible in order to understand and translate it to people in my Universitym, group of friends or graduate students as well. Today I just wrote an small aticle and it was published in one of the most important websites in Rio de Janeiro called Alma Carioca. Please take a look on the article
http://www.almacarioca.net/wolframalpha-nova-revoluo-na-internet-em-maio/ and be aware that this site has the reputation to have among its readers people who construct opinion in this country (Brazil) and will spread it. I hardly can wait for the deployment.
Sincerely,
Vanderlei Martinianos, MSc. Candidate
International Business Consultant
martinianos@martinianos.com
Cel +55 21 9891-0600