Sentient Code and Stephen Wolfram Link

I’m not big on CEO worship. There are a few people that I give tremendous credit to for changing the world for the better while also making bucket loads of money. Stephen Wolfram is probably at the top of my list. His ideas are audacious and inspiring.

This article on Venture Beat is a good look into what he’s trying to do.

“Just as we curate knowledge, we also curate APIs, devices, and digital information,” says Wolfram. “So just as we know things about Ecuador, we also know things about the Twitter API – just as you get the population of Ecuador, you can learn something about the Twitter API.”

I think the bit about sentient code at the end of the article is a sad conclusion but the other concepts are inspiring. He’s trying to develop a smart language for integrating contextual understanding in even the most basic programs running on Raspberry Pi.

People who are building web apps, Wolfram says, will likely use the Wolfram cloud to make that happen. But there will be private cloud solutions as well. Developers who are building mobile apps will be able to get an embedded version of the Wolfram engine, and then use an API to get whatever data you need. All code, however, can simply be copied and pasted between cloud and device and desktop — it’s all the same.