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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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (October 5, 2022) »

1 hour 41 minutes

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What's the history behind emails and instant messaging? I have a hard time imagining life before then and handling communication that may not get a response for days (waiting for a letter in the mail). What were the early days of Wolfram|Alpha like? I see papers from '40s—even '30s—of PRL (physical reviews). They are typeset so cleanly. How did they do this without LaTeX at that time? It's been said that a real perpetual motion machine cannot exist. Do you agree, or do you think we can get there and we just don't know how yet? At a quantum scale, there seems to be perpetual motion. Otherwise the electron would collapse into the nucleus. So is there a Maxwell's demon at the quantum scale that can only open very small doors? What were people's reactions to Carnot's exploration of steam engine mechanics and the development of the idealized Carnot cycle? What is the history of Fahrenheit and ancient representations of temperature—perhaps some that were even non-numerical? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (September 21, 2022) »

1 hour 11 minutes

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You recently talked about relearning the history of thermodynamics. Can I ask for resources for learning the history of thermodynamics? Can you talk about the history of mathematical/computational linguistics (the one that studies the principles and regularities of natural languages)? There are famous Soviet mathematicians (Andreev, Sobolev, Kantorovich, Markov—son of his great father) of Kolmogorov's school who advanced this field in the 1950s through the 1970s. What do you think about the science of statistics? Is AI just computational Statistics? What's the most exciting thing about the AI art revolution taking place now? Was there ever a time like it? What did Henri Poincaré think about the infinities considered by Cantor, Hilbert and Zermelo? Do engineers need the concept of a complete infinity? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (September 7, 2022) »

1 hour 33 minutes

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Did any ancient unit systems use base 10, or did they all use more easily dividable bases like 12, 20, 60, etc.? What is the history of design patterns in software engineering? How did people come to them? Did you ever meet Niklaus Wirth, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Alan Kay and/or Paul Allen? Have Julia sets and Fatou sets played a significant role in the development of computer programming languages? Agreed. Computer programming languages should be object oriented for the language and structure to make sense instead of coming off as abstract and convoluted, and also so they are easier to work with and learn. Did eighteenth-century engineers/craftsmen make use of the paradigm of Newtonian mechanics? Why is it that Isaac Newton spent most of his time trying to prove theological ideas? When will Moore's law expire? Apple announced four-nanometer chip technology, and there has to be a limit. I wonder whether the future will be multicomputational, but to be honest, computers nowadays are more than powerful enough for the average user. View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (August 24, 2022) »

1 hour 26 minutes

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If we had discovered combinatory logic before statistical mechanics, what else might have ensued? I've been wondering why Stephen didn't explore chess in his paper on games. Maybe he could discuss the history of chess AI. Can we design a better game somehow? Do you think it's regrettable that the history of science and technology is almost never taught? Political and social history seem absurdly dominant. The history of science and technology mostly focuses on the results and consequences of discoveries instead of the background of the characters behind them. In the history of science and technology, have you ever seen something really unexpected? Like someone pulling something out of their hat with no prior experience? A surprising event is when someone is an expert in field A, but somehow finds an "isomorphism" with field B and makes a discovery in field B. I feel like Einstein's thought experiments were up there... like how did he think to follow a beam of light? ​I think intuition is very underrated in science. But why does our intuition even work? Will we ever get a philosophical programming language? What do you think about the relationship of philosophical thinking and experimental mathematics? The limits of reason and the limits of Turing machines? ​​It seems in the history of science and technology that the "hard research" is usually kept out of the public eye. Mr. Wolfram, has it been beneficial or overwhelming having your work open to the public? View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (August 10, 2022) »

1 hour 28 minutes

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You have published several other books after NKS. Has publishing technology and quality changed in the intervening time? Would you like to provide a history of fluid mechanics, for example how the Navier–Stokes equations were discovered and how they work? Given the recent hearings on and history of UFOs, do you have any thoughts on this subject? In general, how do you engage with conspiracy theories or "alternative science"? I'm curious because most scientists in institutions are immediately dismissive of anything outside mainstream thought, but to me this seems just as intellectually dishonest as ascribing absolute certainty to any given conspiracy theory. Isn't there a suspicious correlation between a surge in UFO sightings since the 1950s and a surge of UFO movies during that same period? What about the Phoenix Lights event where thousands of people saw the same exact thing? What are some other notable phenomena that people thought they observed that never were proven to have scientific validity (e.g. alchemy)? How has your view of the future changed over the past 40 years? Most surprising is that so many people are using the internet for watching cat videos instead of doing useful things. Maybe cats are the aliens. View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (July 27, 2022) »

1 hour 25 minutes

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How was it determined that light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum? Could you speak about the history of the hard sphere model in statistical mechanics? In many textbooks, it is mentioned rather briefly for something so fundamental. How did the study of nonlinear dynamics come about? I'd imagine it would be a known thing after Newton's work. How important are complex numbers in the history of science and tech? Would the current state be possible without them? Solving equations of that form led negative and complex numbers to be taken more seriously, but people did not see the utility of these types of numbers. A lot of facts that are true about real numbers are also true about complex numbers. They're not necessary to solve many problems, but they're convenient for packaging. Have you ever seen CA-like objects produced by a Jacquard loom? Just curious on your thoughts on technological singularity. View Less »
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