On the Road
I’m at the University of Illinois (Champaign/Urbana) to talk at a meeting of web masters, web designers and webheads.
Interesting dinner last night. About half the table is on a first-name basis with Stephen Wolfram. Someone suggested I read the Amazon reviews of A New Kind of Science which are, apparently, pretty durn funny. For example, one reviewer refers to it as “a new — kind of — science.” Har! That’s the question, isn’t it? Wolfram is proposing the type of unfalsifiable paradigm shift that only prevails if it enables significant progress in addressing old stumbling blocks and new areas of research. I’d be interested in hearing about instances of such progress, so long as you keep in mind that so far I’m up to p. 70 of his book (i.e., I’m, 0.34% of the way through) and I don’t got the math to actually unnerstan any of it.