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@tinker Your core claims are predicated on a mistaken understanding of CS history. My first link was to an implementation of natural language queries in 1973.
Before that, in the 1950s, Turing, Shannon, and others (Dartmouth group) were focused on natural language processing.
Your claim is akin to arguing that neurodivergent people invented the manual transmission, only for neurotypical people to ruin it by inventing the automatic transmission.
> Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
If you think wanting natural language search is a recent desire, or invention, or a tool of the neurotypical, you are woefully misinformed.
E.g., https://www.mcgovern.org/the-legacy-of-patrick-j-mcgovern/from-the-pages-of-tech-history/april-4-1973-geologists-use-natural-language-system-to-study-moon-samples/ from the early '70s.
Or https://github.com/JanWielemaker/chat80 in the early '80s.
More history in https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/pdf/2021/05/e3sconf_iccsre2021_01039.pdf.
@carlmalamud /cc @loweringthebar as this seems very relevant to their ongoing efforts to track weird state things (e.g. https://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/05/official-state-crap-california.html)
