{"id":139701,"date":"2010-01-05T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T13:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=57139"},"modified":"2010-01-05T08:00:26","modified_gmt":"2010-01-05T13:00:26","slug":"stephen-wolfram-talks-bing-partnership-software-strategy-and-the-future-of-knowledge-computing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/139701","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Wolfram Talks Bing Partnership, Software Strategy, and the Future of Knowledge Computing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Software<\/a>, Internet<\/a>, people<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\t\"Stephen<\/a>
\n\t\tGregory T. Huang wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is something oddly human about Stephen Wolfram using his iPhone to look up the mass of the \u201ccascade hyperon,\u201d a subatomic particle with who-knows-what properties. That\u2019s what Wolfram, one of the world\u2019s most distinguished experts in physics and computing, was doing on the day we spoke a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Maybe it stood out because it means that even Wolfram—whose depth of scientific knowledge seems to exist on a different plane from other humans—needs a smartphone these days. Or maybe it\u2019s just funny that anyone would use an iPhone app to look up such a thing.<\/p>\n

In any case, Wolfram, 50, is a renowned scientist, author, and business leader. Born in London, he resides in the Boston area, but his company, Wolfram Research<\/a>, is global, with headquarters in Champaign, IL, and 600-some employees spread around the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Last May, he launched an ultra-ambitious project called Wolfram Alpha, a kind of \u201cknowledge engine\u201d that answers queries about everything from geography to statistics to finance by \u201ccomputing\u201d the answer from an extensive database. It\u2019s different from a search engine, which returns a list of links and documents. But the two can work together: in November, Microsoft announced it had formed a partnership to incorporate Wolfram Alpha into some of Bing\u2019s search results<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So it was high time I checked in with Wolfram, whose career I have followed over the years. Interestingly, he calls Wolfram Alpha \u201cthe most complicated project I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d That says quite a lot, given that Wolfram spent more than a decade writing A New Kind of Science<\/em>, the 1,200-page tome he released in 2002 that potentially turns every field of science and technology on its head. He is also the creator of Mathematica, a software program used widely for scientific and technical computing (things like modeling, simulations, and visualizations)—it\u2019s the main reason Wolfram\u2019s company has been profitable since 1988.<\/p>\n

We spoke by phone on a quiet December afternoon just before the holidays. I asked him about the technology and strategy behind Wolfram Alpha and the future of search engines and knowledge engines, as well as business lessons learned from building his company and running it remotely. (I also couldn\u2019t resist asking for his take on the massive physics effort at the Large Hadron Collider, the Swiss-based particle accelerator that amounts to the biggest science experiment in history.)<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever interviewed Wolfram, you know to choose your questions wisely. It\u2019s not just that he doesn\u2019t suffer fools, but that he answers every question so thoroughly that he will embark on tangents that turn out to be mind-blowing—much more interesting than the path of the original question. Which is a bit like the best queries in science, business, and Wolfram Alpha itself, come to think of it. (You should try the site here<\/a> if you haven\u2019t yet.)<\/p>\n

Here are some edited and slightly condensed highlights from our conversation:<\/p>\n

Xconomy<\/strong>: Tell me about the organizational structure of Wolfram Alpha. How big is the project?<\/p>\n

Stephen Wolfram<\/strong>: Wolfram Alpha has about 200 people. The parent company is Wolfram Research, and headquarters are in Champaign. It\u2019s quite a distributed operation at this point. There are pieces in Boston and the U.K. We have one or two people in Seattle. Our people are scattered literally all over the world. I set a bad example by being a remote CEO starting in 1991. For many kinds of things, it\u2019s tremendously productive.<\/p>\n

X<\/strong>: What are your tips for managing a company remotely?<\/p>\n

SW<\/strong>: My theory is the most productive form of meeting is conference calls with Web conferencing. You can have more people in the meeting, and you\u2019re not wasting anyone\u2019s time. They can work on other things, and if you need them, you just say their name. I\u2019ve found that it\u2019s what I spend my life doing. The Wolfram Alpha project is the most complicated project I\u2019ve ever done. It\u2019s remarkable for what it …Next Page »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Software, Internet, people Gregory T. Huang wrote: There is something oddly human about Stephen Wolfram using his iPhone to look up the mass of the \u201ccascade hyperon,\u201d a subatomic particle with who-knows-what properties. That\u2019s what Wolfram, one of the world\u2019s most distinguished experts in physics and computing, was doing on the day we spoke a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,16,7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-mobile","category-news","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}