MediaBerkman

Radio Berkman: Why We Search

May 5th, 2009

The new “Computational Knowledge Engine” called Wolfram|Alpha has gone through a full media cycle before it has even been unleashed on the world. It has been hyped as a “Google Killer” and denounced as snake oil, and we’re still at least a few days from release.

The simple goal behind the engine is to connect searchers with precise information. Wolfram|Alpha’s search magic comes through a combination of natural language processing and a giant pool of curated data.

If that doesn’t make sense, all you need to know is that people can’t wait to get their information hungry hands on it. A 10-minute preview posted by the Berkman Center on YouTube late last Wednesday has already garnered over 100,000 views.

Stephen Wolfram, the brains behind Mathematica and author of A New Kind of Science, launches his brand new knowledge engine this month. He spoke to David Weinberger this week about how the tool works, and what it might do to search.

Listen:
or download

The Reference Section:
• Listen to the uncut audio of this interview on Radio Berkman Supreme
• Bookmark the soon-to-be-launched Wolfram|Alpha page
• David Weinberger speculates on the significance of Wolfram|Alpha
• Follow Stephen Wolfram on his blog

CC-licensed music this week:
Neurowaxx: “Pop Circus”
Greg Williams: “Teagarden Blues and Rain”

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 120: 2009-005-05_wolfram – Why We Search

What is the future of search? The answers to this question and more on this week’s Radio Berkman.

[MUSIC START]

What does it mean exactly to “search” the web? It’s not like searching under your bed – though the more digitally addicted of us may be guilty of stifling the instinct to “Google” our keys when they’re missing. But on the web usually what we’re trying to find is meaningful real world information in the form of sensory input – language, images, sounds. If that sounds a little overwhelming bear with us.

The way we have gotten to real world information over time has changed. A search for the GDP of France a couple decades ago might have involved scanning the index of a World Almanac, or before that a trip to the local library’s card catalog. Sounds exhausting. Today, if you typed “GDP of France” into your little search bar you would expect to get a list of websites linking to the data – a wikipedia article on the French economy, an article from the CIA’s World Factbook, and a few million others that might or might not contain exactly what you are looking for.

Well, some entrepreneurs in the field of search want us to see past the list of links, and let us jump straight to the information. A quest to find the GDP of France in the search engine of tomorrow could direct you straight to a page filled with customized charts, tables, and maps displaying the GDP of France over time, in various currencies, per capita, by region, compared with other countries – any way you could want it.

And that could quite literally happen tomorrow. The first big attempt at combining a Farmer’s Almanac, a scientific calculator, a research library, and a smart search engine, called “Wolfram Alpha” is set to be unleashed on the web later this May. In public and private previews, the engine has wowed many not just with its wealth of knowledge, but with its ability to take the words you type in the search bar, understand what it is you are probably looking for, and display it in a way you can understand.

Stephen Wolfram, the brains behind the engine, isn’t new to blowing people’s minds with revolutionary projects. In 1988 he released a software called Mathematica that made manipulating and visualizing equations and data a simple desktop activity. And in 2002 he released A New Kind of Science, a one thousand two hundred and eighty page tome that employed computational systems in describing the universe.

By combining the technology behind Mathematica with the concepts behind A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Alpha may catch lightning in a bottle a the third time for Stephen, Shortly after a public preview at Harvard University last week, Stephen sat down with David Weinberger to discuss what Wolfram Alpha does, and how it may change the way we search.

[LEAD IN TO – INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]

Stephen Wolfram is the brains behind Mathematica, A New Kind of Science, and the soon to be launched Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine. You may want to bookmark the site at www.wolframalpha.com

You can find more information than you can imagine at our own humble knowledge engine – blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman. There you’ll find links to David and Stephen’s uncut full hour conversation, and to a video demo of Wolfram Alpha.

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Until next week.

[MUSIC END]

Metadata

MUSIC:
Neurowaxx – Pop Circus
Greg Williams – Teagarden Blues and Rain

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Entry Filed under: audio,radioberkman