History of Science & Technology Q&A: Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (July 24, 2024) »

1 hour 38 minutes

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What was more important to ancient civilizations, philosophy or science? What have been your observations on the role of history in current science and research? Is it still relevant, or are we advancing fast enough to make it irrelevant? Can you tell us about the history of the Wolfram Summer School? How did it start? What is the history of formal verification in computer security? Particularly, how is it related to automated theorem proving and symbolic computation? Do people use Wolfram Language for formal verification? Would you consider using one AI to formally verify software now? What are some examples of scientific/technological "dead ends" other than alchemy (although I suppose we did learn things by accident with that one)? What about Pythagoras? Philosophy or science? Do we have enough information to answer this question (philosophy vs. science) for ancient South and Middle American civilizations? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (May 22, 2024) »

1 hour 23 minutes

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How are new words adopted into language? Can anyone invent a new word, or are there certain processes? Who discovered the dinosaurs? How has technology assisted with research? Which ecosystem could accommodate woolly elephants? Isn't it so strange that every kid has a passion for dinosaurs? A subset of dinosaurs evolved into birds. Aren't bees considered too fat to fly? How has our understanding of the asteroid impact theory evolved since its introduction in the 1980s? If it were technically possible, would submarines be more efficient if they copied fish or aquatic mammals? In your background, I see minerals or corals. Do you like petrology? In popular culture, dinosaurs are often portrayed as solitary and aggressive creatures, akin to fierce monsters. However, scientific research suggests that many dinosaurs may have had complex social behaviors and interpersonal relationships. Could you share an example of a dinosaur whose social behavior has been discovered or hypothesized based on fossil evidence? How do these discoveries influence our perception of dinosaurs, and how they are portrayed in the media? What came first, the dinosaur or the egg? How much computational irreducibility exists in DNA engineering? Do you know what the first written description of human handedness was? There are some depictions and artifacts, but when did we realize "some people are like this"? Did Isaac Newton get the idea for the inverse square law of gravity from reading a book by Giovanni Alfonso Borelli? Are there good simulations of warm periods of the Earth? What would be the physics on Earth with such huge creatures like the dinosaurs? To grow that big, they would have to either have a lot of food or the gravity must have been weirder. Yeah, there's not enough logged data for that to be predicted accurately, IMO. When did they start keeping track of the average temperature, the ~1920s? During the time of the dinosaurs, atmospheric oxygen levels were significantly higher, which contributed to the existence of very large insects. When a space shuttle reenters Earth's atmosphere, does it affect our protection from solar and cosmic radiation? Could this piercing of Earth's barrier impact the stability of the magnetosphere? Is it like a wound that closes gradually or immediately? View Less »

Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A (91 videos)