The secret heart of Wolfram Alpha
At the iSchools conference right now, and I did get to hear Stephen Wolfram speak about the new Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine. One thing that struck me was that an audience of librarians would probably have fumed at his offhand comment that now “everybody is their own reference librarian,” but would have politely applauded anyway— this audience of information scientists pretty much wanted to tear the framework of “Alpha” assumptions apart, and did so with relish. (Special kudos to the woman who was signing the entire keynote address and subsequent debate to a group of people in the front row!) Dr. Wolfram did garner considerable applause at the end, though obviously the Q & A could have gone on for another hour or so…..
Anyway, Wolfram Research graciously offered a tour of their in-town facilities (which conveniently turned out to be right next door to my hotel), which I went on tonight. Very, very nice staff who showed us around (though clearly not through anything sensitive: we saw things like their graphics department and their developer servers, and any questions that touched on proprietary things like the Mathematica algorithms or where the “real” servers were located were politely brushed aside. One thing, though, that I really liked: Wolfram Research has a library, with librarians, who are obviously deeply involved with such things as marketing research for the company, helping with the identification and curation of data for Alpha, and a variety of other activities. The librarian who showed us around said that Wolfram himself valued the services of librarians highly, both for his company and for his own research.
After all, he is indubitably very clever indeed!
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