[davidblair]

I was a talk by Stephen Wolfram at MIT in fall of 2010 about Wolfram Alpha. Never spoke to him personally. When Wolfram answered questions he was always direct and gave grounded answers -- not dreams.

More than once he had to remind people that a lot of the shortcomings they point out are not trivial. It's easy to see how someone could interpet him as egotistical for this. But Wolfram seemed much more focused on building a product now and making it better as you learn from customers.

Wolfram is not trying to make everyone happy. It seemed like is he is trying to build something he loves doing and see if others find it useful.