Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A (81 videos)

Biweekly ask-me-anything about the history of science & technology

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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (November 6, 2024) »

45 minutes

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Were there any ancient travel bloggers (or the ancient equivalent) who wrote about other places they visited? Did ancient civilizations like Rome or Egypt actually communicate with each other? How did they know about each other? How influential was Babylonian science on Greek natural philosophy? How did people know how to tell time before clocks? Did scientists back in the day have rivals or "frenemies" like we see in movies? ​​Did ancient people have the equivalent of church bells to mark the time in cities? Were there any ancient or medieval "tech hacks" that we'd still find useful today? Why do you think the ancient Greeks had a fondness for abstract levels of thought? Is there an aspect of culture that enables this? How did people figure out that the Earth is round? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (October 16, 2024) »

1 hour 21 minutes

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If you were transported back in time to say, the time of Aristotle, what would you do? What would you pursue in terms of career/research? Why are Aristotle, Plato and Socrates the names most people think of when thinking about ancient society and science? Almost all of these philosophers were also physicists. How did ancient thinkers like Democritus come up with early ideas about atoms and matter? Do you think letters or published books/essays are more useful for studying history? What about things like newspapers, but particularly pamphlets and journals that are lost or completely undervalued for not being books, even though people at the time would have considered them essential? Would you run off and not drink the poison if you were Socrates? Do you think it's still possible to be a polymath today like da Vinci? ​​I found a place that still produces those postcards you play on a record player. Do you think that would be a good way of storing things like a password or crypto, especially utilizing steganography? If humanity completely falls back to the storage level of knowledge, would we be able to grow our knowledge back fast enough to decipher old SSDs before they decay, or would that be another Alexandria? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (September 18, 2024) »

1 hour 30 minutes

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Why is history important? History is very good at preventing humanity from making the same mistakes. How would you explain the history of pi? Do we know why Brahmagupta came up with the rules for arithmetic and algebra with zero and negative quantities? His book does appear to be a discontinuous jump in understanding. Do you know if there was any physical reason that the Greek "elements" were associated with particular geometric shapes? The Pi Day thing is great; I think I might get a shirt. To what extent did your own path/work intersect the heydays of Bell Labs and notable people therefrom? Did you ever use an Amiga computer? With mobile devices we are basically going back to terminals. ​​​​I used to have a Silicon Graphics Indigo 2 sitting on my desk for AutoCAD and 3D modeling. Those were great machines and fun times! Speaking of McCarthy and those days, do you think that sticking to s-expressions as opposed to m-expressions and Wolfram Language–style ones impeded Lisp's adoption historically? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (September 4, 2024) »

1 hour 28 minutes

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​​When, for you, was a computational approach introduced to the scientific process or the scientific culture?Who began the trend of naming discoveries, inventions, etc. after yourself?Became clear? How? Pretty sure no one ever solved the three-body equation.Commentary about naming conventions.The Trojan asteroids are named after characters from the Trojan War in Greek mythology because of the convention that started with the discovery of the first few such asteroids near Jupiter. These asteroids occupy stable Lagrangian points (L4 and L5) in Jupiter's orbit, and astronomers decided to name them after heroes from the Trojan War, with those at L4 being named after Greek heroes and those at L5 named after Trojan heroes.Any planned work with tungsten?​​Regarding naming, are there any good naming conventions in computer languages?What's your view of innovation in economic science? We are nearly 250 years since Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.Recall the idea of "Recapitate" instead of "Apply" View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (August 21, 2024) »

1 hour 24 minutes

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Recent thoughts on history Was SMP or Mathematica inspired by LISP and what are the pros and cons of LISP-like languages? Was the decision to have Mathematica untyped unlike something like Lean (proof checker) a good decision for usability or would you do it differently today? Type-checking always felt like dimensional analysis. Was your idea to use "transformations on symbolic expressions" a sudden insight after reading, say, Schönfinkel on combinators, or did it follow from working out atoms of computation, something else? What is the history of lazy evaluation? Have you come up with any new theories of human reasoning from working on Mathematica and computation? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (August 7, 2024) »

1 hour 5 minutes

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What is the history of data visualization? Was the discipline only able to flourish relatively recently with the introduction of computers, or is there a deep and rich history of people creating pictures by hand to extract visual insights from abstract data? Nikola Tesla was building a machine for the wireless transmission of electricity. It seems like we're getting to a place where we can beam solar energy down to Earth from solar-harvesting satellites. I'm curious what Stephen's take on this is and the timeline for this research/what is needed to make it a reality. ​​​​From your perspective, what is the importance of compression functions in computer science? Do we know who designed written language? Or are there still missing pieces in history such that we can't properly map out the history of written work? What is the stage of development/history around implementing cellular automata in hardware, such as quantum dot cellular automata? What large-scale, hardware-accelerated simulations would be interesting? I'm curious about the history of eyeglasses. Why has the tech not seem to have advanced much? View Less »
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