History of Science & Technology Q&A (October 16, 2024)

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: If you were transported back in time to say, the time of Aristotle, what would you do? What would you pursue in terms of career/research? - Why are Aristotle, Plato and Socrates the names most people think of when thinking about ancient society and science? - Almost all of these philosophers were also physicists. - How did ancient thinkers like Democritus come up with early ideas about atoms and matter? - Do you think letters or published books/essays are more useful for studying history? - What about things like newspapers, but particularly pamphlets and journals that are lost or completely undervalued for not being books, even though people at the time would have considered them essential? - Would you run off and not drink the poison if you were Socrates? - Do you think it's still possible to be a polymath today like da Vinci? - ​​I found a place that still produces those postcards you play on a record player. Do you think that would be a good way of storing things like a password or crypto, especially utilizing steganography? - If humanity completely falls back to the storage level of knowledge, would we be able to grow our knowledge back fast enough to decipher old SSDs before they decay, or would that be another Alexandria?