Why do I want to study Natural Language Processing?
I remember an episode of the television series “The Good Wife” where the two partners of the law firm, Diane and Will, faced a crisis at the firm (I can’t remember what that crisis was), and Diane looked at Will and asked him why are we doing this. Which she meant was that why were they in that law business to begin with.
Sometimes when facing a crisis in any job that we do, it is sometimes important to think why we started doing something to begin with. It helps us clear our mind, in that it helps us decide what our priorities are. I am having such a minor crisis when studying Natural Language Processing myself.
I wanted to learn Natural Language Processing because I was already a Computer Science graduate and this topic was the closest thing through which I will be able to study the subject in which my hero, Noam Chomsky, has worked his entire life, which is linguistics. But that cannot be the only reason to keep studying a subject, can it? So I thought why did Noam Chomsky wanted to learn linguistics to begin with. Well he wanted to learn about human nature or more importantly how the human mind works. And language was the only way he believed he could penetrate the human mind. And lo and behold, almost half a century later he has decisively proved that there is such a thing as human nature.
But what is that human nature? We have almost no idea. So why should I study Natural Language Processing. Well I have decided that I will study Natural Language Processing to better understand what that human nature is, and create technologies that will bring out the best of that nature. Or at-least give people the choice by which they can use my technology to bring out the best in their nature.
