Wolfram Alpha Turns 1: An Interview with Stephen Wolfram.

Looking Ahead: Analyzing Your Own Data, More Knowledge Domains, Programming with Natural Language Queries

Besides looking back, we also asked Wolfram about his plans for the future. In answering this question, he stressed that this new approach to computing is just getting started and it usually takes him about 10 years to develop his projects before he fully understands what’s possible once this new paradigm has arrived.

For the near future, however, Wolfram hopes that Wolfram Alpha‘s users will be able to upload their own data and perform complex computations on this data and use Wolfram Alpha to find correlations within Alpha’s vast database. The usage scenarios for this could include anything from analyzing sales data to doing personal analytics on data from devices like theFitbit. In addition to uploading data, Wolfram Alpha will soon make it easier for users to download data to use in presentations.

Wolfram also wants to bring Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica closer together. One development that Wolfram is especially excited about is using Wolfram Alpha’s ability to understand and compute natural language queries in order to create Mathematica programs. By building on this capability, Mathematica users may soon be able to write and manipulate their code using natural language queries just like in Wolfram Alpha.

Obviously, the team behind Wolfram Alpha will also continue to add more data across an every-growing number of knowledge domains. Today, for example, the team is launching real-time space weather data, 12 completegenomes and local maps, as well as numerous other knowledge domains related to math, biology, physics and geography.

Full interview with Stephen Wolfram @http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wolfram_alpha_turns_one_our_interview_with_stephen_wolfram.php