History of Science & Technology Q&A (March 23, 2022)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: What happened with the computer during WWII? ​​- The ​Imitation Game is a great movie about computers in World War 2. - ​​How important are Nobel Prizes? Are there any scandalous omissions? ​​- It is taxable income. - ​​Some of the physics prizes have been a bit random. - Penzias and Wilson more or less accidentally discovered the CMB, but Gamov predicted it and got nothing (I think). -​​ Thank you for encouraging our curiosity. My question is: When and why did apprenticeships end? It seems all the greats, such as Benjamin Franklin, were sent to be apprentices. ​​- What happened to the interdisciplinary science of the Renaissance? - Do the efficiency gains of specialization outweigh the harms of institutional departmentalization? - ​​Are crazy ideas useful to talk about, or are they only good for guiding intuition in research?

Om Podcasten

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of nearly four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business. On his podcast, Stephen discusses topics ranging from the history of science to the future of civilization and ethics of AI.