Stephen Wolfram Q&A

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Some collected questions and answers by Stephen Wolfram

Questions may be edited for brevity; see links for full questions.

April 9, 2005

From: Interview by Andres Hax, Clarín

How long will it take for your ideas from A New Kind of Science to become accepted/commonplace?

It’s inevitably a gradual process. But I think it’s off to a very good start. Right now, for example, there’s an average of one or two academic papers per day involving NKS being written. I’m sure that in a decade there’ll be lots of people who have built their careers on NKS, and quite a few organizations built on it. In 50 years I expect that more new technology will be being made using NKS than traditional science. By that time, NKS will be viewed as just another branch of science, like physics or chemistry. Most of its core conceptual ideas will be commonplace and some of its basic methods will be taught in school alongside basic math. And probably almost nobody will remember that it took any time for NKS to be accepted.

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