Hi Bridget,
Not sure about clever, but I'll give this a go.
As both computation and data become more decentralised and distributed, everyone becomes a service for everyone else. My sense from what Wolfram Alpha is saying in the post is that in the long term, the kinds of computational capability which are currently best experienced through their platform will in future be better experienced through countless other platforms which make use of their capabilities, effectively as source code.
For me, this model (which as Michael points out is really a rebrand of cloud computation) raises two opportunities for museums - which I'll characterise as read/write.
On the read side, my personal view is that we will be able to treat the world of cloud computation and the linked open data that runs across it kind of like a utility. Hence if we've got heavy-duty applications to run, or we have a body of collections information which requires a lot of contextualisation, we will be able to draw on the linked open data cloud to help us crunch.
On the write side, we have a hell of a lot of data which could equally provide a useful utility for other consumers. If we make collections information massively open - so that it can flow across any platform that happens to be providing this kind of computation - the we could find ourselves with a new kind of relevance to other industries.
As things stand at the moment, I think museums are starting to see the value of the consumption of what things like a distributed Wolfram Alpha is offering, but we are a long way from seeing the value of writing to it. The argument I'm trying to make is that a successful museum in 2020 will have massively distributed its collections data to take advantage of these developments but we're having to take small steps toward that aim!
Particularly, we need to have some kind of sea-change in our view of value. To over-extend the utility metaphor if you are providing electricity into a grid, the end-user doesn't much care which bit of electricity is yours and which comes from Powergen. Similarly, if we write collections data into the Wolfram Alpha model, then the end-user of their computational heft won't (potentially) care that it's our data. I'm not sure how comfortable we can get with that, or how quickly.
Equally, I may have completely and utterly failed to grasp what they're talking about!
Nick
Nick Poole
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> On 21 Nov 2013, at 14:04, "Bridget McKenzie" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Clever people, what do you think this will mean for museums?
>
> Big new thing coming from Wolfram Alpha
> http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/11/something-very-big-is-coming-our-most-important-technology-project-yet/
>
> He says:
> "inside the Wolfram Language we have a whole computable model of the world. And it becomes trivial to write a program that makes use of the latest stock price, computes the next high tide, generates a street map, shows an image of a type of airplane, or a zillion other things."
> And it will lead to...
> "There?ll be the Wolfram Programming Cloud, that allows one to create Wolfram Language programs, then instantly deploy them in the cloud through an instant API, or a form-based app, or whatever. Or deploy them in a private cloud, or, for example, through a Function Call Interface, deploy them standalone in desktop programs and embedded systems. And have a way to go from an idea to a fully deployed realization in an absurdly short time.
> There?ll be the Wolfram Data Science Platform, that allows one to connect to all sorts of data sources, then use the kind of automation seen in Wolfram|Alpha Pro, then pick out and modify Wolfram Language programs to do data science?and then use CDF to set up reports to generate automatically, on a schedule, through an API, or whatever.
> There?ll be the Wolfram Publishing Platform that lets you create documents, then insert interactive elements using the Wolfram Language and its free-form linguistics?and then deploy the documents, on the web using technologies like CloudCDF, that instantly support interactivity in any web browser, or on mobile using the Wolfram Cloud App.
> Yours in bafflement
> Bridget
>
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