Comments on: WolframAlpha Hooks Me

By: Ruben Puentedura

Ruben Puentedura — Sun, 17 May 2009 07:03:12 +0000

So far, I’d have to say that I’m fascinated by what Wolfram Alpha can do, but less thrilled with the largely opaque approach to data that it embodies. I just posted a rather lengthy piece on the subject over at my blog – we’ll see what people have to say.

By: Gardner

Gardner — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:01:40 +0000

After a few more experiments, I’m not getting the rich results I’d expect (and that the demo touts). Either I ask strange questions (of course) or the server is just fried with all the geek traffic.

The “tips for asking questions” is quite interesting, btw….

By: Gardner

Gardner — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:54:48 +0000

Agreed, not a Google killer, since Google is fueled (so far as I can tell) by augmenting human intellect by noting acts of deliberate linking and assuming those acts are meaningful in some way. The searcher decides on the meaning; Google merely returns results with a high probability of relevance (because it assumes the human beings act in purposeful and meaningful ways most of the time). That’s “merely,” but that’s also “wonderfully,” as Google is essentially a platform for massively distributed intelligence.

WolframAlpha is more AI than Augmentation, though it wouldn’t work if there weren’t a WWW (not just an Internet) that has generated so much human interest and activity that this stuff actually got put in openly discoverable places. Plus it’s not really returning purposeful human behavior so much as it’s returning information its semantic engines determine (with, it must be said, pretty daggone good determination) will be relevant in deep and broad contexts.

So maybe Google is the map and WolframAlpha is the territory?

We’ll see. First I have to figure out how to get WolframAlpha to stop assuming “Gardner” is a surname…. :)