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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New episode streaming Wednesday, November 20, at 3:30pm ET. Submit your questions

History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (December 1, 2021) »

1 hour 18 minutes

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Who are the most famous Mathematica users you know? What separates the greats (Einstein, Dirac, Newton, etc.) from everyone else? Is there a tip you have for a young physics undergraduate to become a better physicist? I am a physicist which didn't get to do any discrete mathematics in his bachelor. I got involved in summer school last year, but because of my lack of technical knowledge i didnt get the most of it. Apart from Mathematica and (hyper)graph theory what would you recommend one should study to get more involved with the project? When do you look at the story of some technology, how far should you go? I tried to study the story of machine learning and in a sense the first decision tree was 500 BC. And even earlier in the Bible. Is Excel a computational tool? Who invented Polyominoes? And why where they invented what role did they play in mathematics? Does knowing calculus allow one to make money in the 18 century? Or get a job? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (November 17, 2021) »

1 hour 17 minutes

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Are you familiar with Norbert Wiener's work? is it relevant to current computer science at all? Do you have any interesting stories / comments about Frederick P. Brooks? What did you learn from The Mythical Man Month? (and when did you first read it?) Dear Dr. Wolfram, what is your opinion on John Backus' lecture from 1977:"Can Programming be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"? - Or was it even one cornerstone for Your thinking? Did general system theory and systems theory die out and why? Does functional programming count as liberation from von Neumann style? According to Wikipedia, Fred Books (born 1931) is still alive. Do you think scientific software development has a very different development practice? Are you saying that flowchart descriptions of algorithms and computations originate from systems theory/general systems theory? I always thought that is just a part of modern computer science Regarding what you just mentioned about education and teaching programming - what are your thoughts generally on how far our higher level languages are abstracting more and more away from the core metal? Do you worry about future generations of programmers not understanding core fundamentals and that we might come become stunted in terms of coming up with new languages and computing paradigms due to a lack of expertise? Were you ever involved in the development of a kind of software that you now think might actually be morally questionable in some sense? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (November 3, 2021) »

1 hour 28 minutes

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What sort of maths was ancient India up to? How were modern shipping containers standardized are what are some of the advantages of optimal standardized packaging? Are there any developments in replacing or improving workflow for math papers, that is mostly writing in latex and reading pdf if I am not mistaken in what is current trend. How can we ensure the software generating the proof is correct? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (October 20, 2021) »

1 hour 18 minutes

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The movie "Adventures of a Mathematician" about Stan Ulam... How do you approach studying the history of technology to inform your work on current projects? Is there a list of history of science and technology books that you recommend? What was it about ancient Greece that allowed for great advances in math and science and great thinkers? Could you talk about Ed Fredkin? In "2001: A Space Odyssey," the alien monolith is said to be a von Neumann probe. Is it rectangular because of the cellular automaton inspiration? What is the book top-right with the horse's head? What do you think is the significance of the antikythera device? Have you read Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy? You said the cellular automata experiments you did in the 80s could have been done at Los Alamos. Why weren't they? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (October 6, 2021) »

1 hour 8 minutes

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What does history have to say about combating anti-science movements, wacky conspiracy theories, etc.? How have people come to believe in gray-headed aliens? Would Richard Feynman have agreed that the counterculture movement was associated with interest in quantum mechanics in the 60s? ​Did Dick Feynman ever prank you or pick a lock that belonged to you? ​Stan Ulam's work on cellular automata and the Manhattan Project? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (September 22, 2021) »

1 hour 32 minutes

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Why are keyboards the default computer interface? Why didn't someone invent the printing press earlier? Was it an engineering problem or a lack of entrepreneurship? Would Professor Feynman have been able to make it as a standup comedian? How much science and technology isn't published or publicly available? Is the most advanced science in the published literature, patents and things like that? Why is the Turing machine model so dominant today in the theory of computation compared to the equivalent lambda calculus? Is there an essay about the printing of "A New Kind of Science"? Is it possible to identify the moment in history when scientific investigation as we know it today broke away from the study of philosophy? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do you think certain cultures have had such a disproportionate success in science, discovery and business? View Less »
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