Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A (85 videos)

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

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New episode streaming Wednesday, February 5, 2025, at 3:30pm ET. Submit your questions

History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (January 26, 2022) »

1 hour 22 minutes

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With the benefit of hindsight, what would you have changed in the early developments of the internet during the late 60s, early 70s, if anything? What was your take in 1993 when US Congress cancelled the Superconducting Super Collider project which had been started south of Dallas, TX? What long-term effects did this have? Dr. Wolfram, I recall Sir. Kelvin or one of his contemporary was saying everything is discovered physics, it was just before special relativity. Do you think we are in a similar precipice? I'm a cryogenic engineer if you want your brain stored later in life then please don't hesitate to contact me Stephen Would be a honor to store your brain View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (January 12, 2022) »

1 hour 19 minutes

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What is the history of bugs and debugging? Did you ever meet Andrei Sakharov? What do you think of his Cosmology? How did you meet Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and why do you think he was able to take very computational approach to finance instead of reasoning by analogy? How does Log4Shell compare to other historically-significant web vulnerabilities? Does the internet tend to course correct after large vulnerabilities? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (December 29, 2021) »

1 hour 31 minutes

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Do you think of science/technology as progressing in the way Thomas Kuhn suggested in 'The Structure of Scientific Revolution' (i.e., paradigm - crisis - paradigm shift, incommensurability, etc...) or in some other way? Stephen, is science always been based on finding patterns in nature? Why did networked computing grow relatively slowly between 1969's Arpanet and 1989's HTTP? Was it a lack of imagining the internet's potential or technical barriers (e.g. packet switching network)? When did you first get introduced to the internet? Who told you about it? What tool(s) did you use...Mosaic? What was your reaction? Why do you believe it took so long for highly parallel graphics cards to be applied to scientific fields? It seems like a 10-15 year delay from SGI to CUDA etc Stephen has said once that he knew Julia Robinson. Would be great to hear more about it Any thoughts on the Heideggerian view of technology and modern technology? How does self-organizing order emerge in physics and biology - are they analogous? Can the universe be said to be in the business of self organization? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (December 15, 2021) »

1 hour 22 minutes

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Can we consider very early games like the game of Go as an expression of a mathematical thinking? Is science still the place where the best thrive or has that shifted to "industry"? What's the historical context? Do you credit E=mc^2 to Einstein or to the Italian Olinto De Pretto, who discovered it before Einstein? Is there a high period of any one institution that's your favourite? (ex: Bell Labs and the young Turks in the 40s, PARC in the 70s and 80s, etc.) What technology got lost from the moon-landing so they cant repeat it nowadays? And how did they shielded the radiation during the moon mission? What is your perspective on the growing sentiment of racism in technology, such as algorithmic bias? Do you agree that there is an issue, and if so what are some steps that need to be taken in response? Do you think (monotheistic) religion was in some sense a precursor to science because it presented the world as having a single truth which all people could somehow access? Why did it take so long to get so technically advanced? View Less »
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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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