14 DAY TRIAL // Wolfram Alpha has been in the news for a while with people intrigued by its unique approach to online searching. It was finally launched last week, but has the buzz been justified? Apparently, it's on its way to reaching 100 million queries so it looks like the search engine might enjoy the spotlight for a while. As such, Mashable had an interview with its creator, Dr. Sephen Wolfram himself.
Dr. Wolfram gave some answers as to how he got the idea to build the search engine and how it relates to Mathematica, the computational software he created and is currently maintaining. “I got really curious about whether one could take that systematic organization of that abstract world in computational terms and apply it in a systematic way to the practical, actual world of actual real-world data.”
The other crucial element of Wolfram Alpha, besides the computational analysis, is its capability to parse natural speech and language, letting users ask actual questions rather than search for keywords. “And so I realized that the only way that we as humans are going to communicate with a system that’s dealing with all of those practical things is using the thing we know very well, which is our human language. That was another piece of what needed to be done, to sort of break away from the precise computer language idea…and embrace the notion that one was actually going to deal with…practical, actual human usage.” Dr. Wolfram added.
The fact that users became so accustomed to using keywords made it actually difficult for them to use Wolfram Alpha, with the majority left staring at the computer screen wondering what to ask. “People see an input field and they think search engine and they think two or three or four words…the main point is that they’re saying let’s search for a concept, not let’s try and get a specific answer for a question that we actually have.”
Dr. Wolfram also talked about future plans for Wolfram Alpha and what features we might expect to see in the near future. “Another thing that will be a short-term direction is being able to upload some data in addition to this little lump of language you put into the input field. For example, being able to upload a spreadsheet, or being able to upload an image or sound or something like that, and basically using the analysis algorithms we have on that data.”
You can find the whole interview here.