I'm interviewing Dr. Wolfram in a few hours, so I wanted to reach out to the HN community and see what questions you'd like to have answered, technical or non.<p>Most of my interview is going to be straightforward, but I'd love to throw at least one tech Q in somewhere.
I would be interested in:<p>- if they're leveraging any new algorithms (categorical, semantic, or otherwise) and hopefully he could briefly explain the new ideas involved.<p>- any shifts in research and development regarding semantic search algorithms, semantic web and how Wolfram|Alpha plans to contribute to these trends.<p>- specific types of research information (DNA, relevant research information) and use cases for businesses (i find that the service is novel, but not particularly useful to businesses)<p>- how frequent they will be updating the existing data, and how frequenty they will be adding data<p>- shout out to U of I?<p>btw - can you guys focus more on the startups instead of how-to's? i miss the days when sites actually reported on new startups and not about gossip or top 10 lists.
Search is a particularly disruptive technology. Traditional search engines, e.g. Google, have made searching for certain types of information phenomenally effective. This has resulted in interesting privacy ramifications ("Google-stalking") and issues with research (easy access to bad information).<p>Wolfram|Alpha works by way of a new search paradigm: rather than simple data-mining it seeks to construct /new/ information based on a query. What do you foresee as the social consequences of a computational search engine?
His Atlas of Simple Programs has excited me since I first heard mention of it. Now with Mathematica 7 and Alpha out, will there be a little more free time to take the Atlas to the next level?
Why he insists on applying draconian terms and conditions to all his ventures (NKS: <a href="http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-iv?firstview=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-iv?firstview=1</a> WolframAlpha: <a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/termsofuse.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wolframalpha.com/termsofuse.html</a>)
Ask him about "his new network theory of fundamental physics, related to cellular automata" - <a href="http://twitter.com/novaspivack/status/1815527180" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/novaspivack/status/1815527180</a>
I gather that he employs lots of people to manually enter rules and factual information. If cellular automata are the foundation of all higher level complexity and even of the human mind, as he claims, why does he not build a learning algorithm instead?<p>My hunch is that his approach to knowledge engineering doesn't scale very well in terms of breadth and depth of knowledge and its rate of change. Not even considering very far reaching inferencing capabilities. Of course it's difficult to know that without knowing how exactly he does it. It's just a hunch.
Ask him why claims on his website that they have 5.4M unique visitors (<a href="http://tinyurl.com/pwobdf" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/pwobdf</a>) when Compete shows they have 70'000 :)
Wolfram Alpha's relationship with Mathematica is pretty obvious, would he care to explain its relationship with NKS (he says W|A it's an offspring of both projects)?