Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A (88 videos)

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

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New episode streaming Wednesday, March 19, 2025, at 3:30pm ET. Submit your questions

History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (December 13, 2023) »

1 hour 19 minutes

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​​Can you talk about the history of gazettes, i.e. the recording of "official" information? Why are some older coins or bills worth more than their original face value? ​How does Galileo's equivalence principle relate to Einstein's equivalence principle? ​Important work from bright minds gets shelved, and then we discover the work decades later and put it to use. Have you thought of ways to reduce this happening so much? Could you elucidate the historiographical development of string theory, assess whether its inception was exclusively within the mathematical domain, and determine if it has yielded any tangible technological advancements? Some old things are worth more due to nostalgia. Eventually, they will lose their value again. What is the history behind observer theory? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (November 22, 2023) »

1 hour 15 minutes

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​​What are your thoughts about how R&D has been done and funded across history? I came across Petri nets in university and never had the chance to dive deep into them. Can you give some historical context about that concept, and if it found actual application anywhere? ​​Do you have any reflections on the recent leadership situation at OpenAI and, perhaps, the history of decision making for large scientific research programs? Has "EA," or effective altruism (and similar philosophies), had close involvement with tech in the past? Can you talk on the history of podcasts? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (November 8, 2023) »

57 minutes

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How did taxation work before money was invented? How did trading happen between nations that used different number systems? Can you discuss the role of ancient civilizations, such as the Greeks, in laying the foundations of modern science and technology? ​Did Isaac Newton spend a significant amount of time attempting to transmute lead into gold? Did he believe in all of the miracles described in the Old Testament? What was the greatest technological advancement to come out of the Roman Empire? ​​Given what we know now about symbolic representations and languages, what do you make of the break from computable mathematics in the 1800s/1900s and our current set-theoretic foundations? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (October 25, 2023) »

1 hour 37 minutes

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Can you talk about the history of quicksort or Hoffman encoding? TIFF is also lossless... I think in some version... Standard method for 5G? That is, within 5G, does it operate on the bit level rather than the radio wave level? There is a similar problem with SIP: not all vendors implement the same standards or follow the standard properly, and you end up with interop problems. Would that also work with a logographic language? The future is gonna consist of languages that are just emojis. ​​When did the study of economics form? What's the history of "double-entry" bookkeeping? Can something as basic be redefined? ​​What were early tabulating machines like (such as the ones IBM sold during WWII)? Do you think future historians will have a harder time parsing through all the information available in the last 50 years compared to the last century, or even two centuries? What is the best historical record for research in this case? Books, images, video, etc.? Why doesn't copyright law allow flexibility with people who want to share their works online? When did copyright law begin? How did legal structures evolve with the creation of the internet? Were completely new structures built because of it? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (September 20, 2023) »

1 hour 19 minutes

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Were the 70s truly the golden age of electronics? What's the history of hacking? When did security risks become a prominent issue? ​​Did you get to know Carver Mead at Caltech? What progress did the antigravity research movement gain in the 50s–60s, and why did research eventually stop? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (August 30, 2023) »

1 hour 38 minutes

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​​Do you believe we had an exploration age? Sometimes the hype feels exponential, but maybe it's just linear. What are your thoughts? When was it that we learned about weather being essentially mathematics and physics, which could be utilized to create weapons that can control weather and weather conditions? ​​Are you aware of any efforts (past or present) to use nature to understand mathematics instead of the other way around? Happy belated birthday! Anything notable to say about the history of Stephen Wolfram? What is the history of naming mathematical terms? How has this branched off into other areas of naming? ​​The major reason Greek is overused in science is the fact that ancient Greek vocabulary literally has a word for everything. Which is better, autobiographies or biographies? Which gives a better historical record of a person? View Less »
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