History of Science & Technology Q&A (August 16, 2023)

The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

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: Do you know the history of the invention of OCR (Optical character recognition)? - With recent developments, can you talk about the history of theories of extraterrestrial life and search for extraterrestrial life? - Who do you think is the most undervalued scientist in the last 100 years? Someone who has contributed a great deal to society, but has largely gone unnoticed by the public eye? - ​Why were elite physicists (and others) reluctant to embrace computers? - I saw an interview of Ed Fredkin, where he explained how he tried to learn Richard Feynman on how to use a Commodore PET I think it was. - "There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!"–Feynman - Didn't he end up causing a hubbub at Los Alamos because he was personally repairing calculators/computers rather than the IBM person? - ​In the early-mid 60s, the Soviet Union was very seriously considering what would have been a sort of proto-internet. Do you know anything about this? - How do you think kids today would react if they were suddenly teleported 40 years in the past? - Have aliens always been referred to as "aliens"? Or did they have another name in history? - Has there been any observable changes to planets during human life on Earth? - There's a weird Catholic history of discussing ETs that are neither human nor angels. As a theoretical theological field called "exo-theology". - ​What is the oldest book that you actually use and is not a museum piece?