Off-topic: I wonder when Wolfram engineers will discover the technology of Redo (a.k.a. Ctrl-Y,) so I won't have to be mortally afraid of hitting Ctrl-Z and losing my work every time I work with Wolfram Mathematica.
Some of the stuff Wolfram worked on was neat, but I really don't care for the self-aggrandizing tone of everything he writes. He comes off as having a nasty superiority complex.
Steve Jobs also uses words like "revolutionary" and "magical" when talking about his own work. Why can't Stephen Wolfram get a pass?
Personally I appreciate that Stephen Wolfram tries to talk about his work in a larger context and using terms that even a layperson can understand, rather than hiding behind specialist jargon and the false modesty of a traditional expert persona.
He may not be right about computational program-space mining becoming a trillion-dollar industry, but he's brave enough to frame his long-term enthusiasm in these terms. What's the worst that can happen? If it eventually turned out that he was right, he'd certainly be remembered. If he's wrong, no big deal -- it doesn't take anything away from his accomplishments as a programmer and CEO.
Agreed. I remember hearing a quote when his search engine, WolframAlpha, came out: "I wonder which will become self aware first. WolframAlpha or Wolfram, Stephen".
A phd in particle physics (even from caltech) can be as meaningless as journalism from yale/harvard. Entire careers have been based on strings ...which is famously not even wrong.
As in every profession, there are lots of "artists". Some also have substance though: ie. Feynman was like Dali: some neat stuff (teaching) and some less neat1, to still make a living.
1 ,,Please send my notes back'' -- Stückelberg (not the painter), as his worst enemy used to joke (back) to him
I disagree: you definitely have to be able to understand lots of complicated stuff to get a PhD in astrophysics from a place like Caltech. And even if string theory isn't physics (i.e., doesn't make testable predictions) it still is a kind of math or at least inspires a lot of math.
Notice of joint stipulation and join stipulation re plaintiff Wolfram Research Inc.’s motion to compel the production of documents from California Institute of Technology.
I believe it was Computer Mathematics which originally developed SMP (Symbolic Manipulation Program). SMP was one of the first commercial products designed to solve abstract mathematical problems, and is generally considered the forerunner to Mathematica. My father used it extensively while working for the DoD back in the 80's and 90's and was a huge fan.
I think one of the things that makes Stephen Wolfram so talented is his philosophical approach to solving problems. That, combined with his technical ability has been able to create some really great stuff.
With luck, one day Stephen Wolfram will discover how to write paragraphs with more than 2 sentences, on average. This technology will completely revolutionize the way humans communicate with Stephen Wolfram.
He could have easily spent his entire life writing 2 sentence paragraphs. Or he could have delegated his writing to someone else.
But that surely would have introduced errors. With his new discovery, his deep and unique ideas may finally become more accessible to the rest of us.
