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: How much of your work on cellular automata was influenced by Ulam's work during the Manhattan Project? - How do you approach studying the history of technology to inform your work on current projects? Do you do very targeted studies when starting a project? How much historical context is enough? - Is there a list of Wolfram recommended history of science and technology books? - What was it about ancient Greece that allowed for great advancements in math and science and great thinkers? - Could you talk about the history on Ed Fredkin's work and if its similar to your work about Cellular Automata? - In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the alien monolith is a Von Neumann probe. Is it rectangular because of the cellular automata inspiration? - What is the book top right with the horse's head? Just curious! - What do you think is the significance of the antikythera mechanism? How close do you think the Greeks were to a technological civilization? - Have you read Asimov's Foundation? Do you think psychohistory could actually be an actual science with real predictive power? Does it need to find pockets of computational reducibility - You said the cellular automata experiments you did in the 80s could have been done in Los Alamos, why do you think those weren't done then?

History of Science and Technology Q&A (October 20, 2021)