May 14, 2012 — Stephen Wolfram
(This is the third in a series of posts about A New Kind of Science. Previous posts have covered the original reaction to the book and what’s happened since it was published.)
Today ten years have passed since A New Kind of Science (“the NKS book”) was published. But in many ways the development that started with the book is still only just beginning. And over the next several decades I think its effects will inexorably become ever more obvious and important.
Indeed, even at an everyday level I expect that in time there will be all sorts of visible reminders of NKS all around us. Today we are continually exposed to technology and engineering that is directly descended from the development of the mathematical approach to science that began in earnest three centuries ago. Sometime hence I believe a large portion of our technology will instead come from NKS ideas. It will not be created incrementally from components whose behavior we can analyze with traditional mathematics and related methods. Rather it will in effect be “mined” by searching the abstract computational universe of possible simple programs.
And even at a visual level this will have obvious consequences. For today’s technological systems tend to be full of simple geometrical shapes (like beams and boxes) and simple patterns of behavior that we can readily understand and analyze. But when our technology comes from NKS and from mining the computational universe there will not be such obvious simplicity. Instead, even though the underlying rules will often be quite simple, the overall behavior that we see will often be in a sense irreducibly complex.
So as one small indication of what is to come—and as part of celebrating the first decade of A New Kind of Science—starting today, when Wolfram|Alpha is computing, it will no longer display a simple rotating geometric shape, but will instead run a simple program (currently, a 2D cellular automaton) from the computational universe found by searching for a system with the right kind of visually engaging behavior.
April 9, 2012 — Wolfram Blog Team
Ever since we launched the Computable Document Format (CDF) last summer, people have been excited about the ease of deploying interactive documents to their clients and on their websites, and we’re seeing CDFs used to enhance blogs, textbooks, and other applications in many different areas.
Now we’re holding a virtual workshop where you can hear from the author of an award-winning CDF textbook, chat with Wolfram experts in publishing and application development, and learn how to get started with your own projects.
The Wolfram CDF Virtual Workshop will feature a keynote by Conrad Wolfram plus talks and Q&A sessions with Wolfram experts.
The virtual event will be held Tuesday, April 24, at the following times:
* 8am–noon Eastern Daylight Time (EDT); 1pm–5pm British Summer Time (BST)
* Repeat session: 1pm–5pm EDT; 6pm–10pm BST
Virtual seats are limited—see the event schedule and register today!
March 7, 2012 — Markus van Almsick, Software Technology
It is no secret that Mathematica has a big user community that is alive and kicking. It may, however, surprise you that the global user community has successfully organized 10 international Mathematica conferences around the world. It all began 20 years ago in the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, about two meters below sea level, where Wolfram Research had organized the Mathematica Days. The Mathematica Days were a small sibling of the larger annual Mathematica Conference, which in those days had its venue 8,800 km farther west in the Bay Area. Among the participants in Rotterdam were Peter Mitic (The Open University, UK), Gautam Dasgupta (Columbia University, New York), Pertti Näykki (Finland), Klaus Sutner (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh), Robert Kragler (Fachhochschule Ravensburg, Weingarten, Germany), and Veikko Keränen (Rovaniemi Institute of Technology, Finland). Most of them met for the first time and came from different walks of life, but they all shared the same enthusiasm for algorithmic mathematics. The lack of an academic conference targeting innovative work in, with, and about Mathematica triggered Peter Mitic to propose the idea of a symposium. His new friends very much supported the endeavor, and in 1994 Stephen Wolfram became the godfather of the new event by suggesting the name “International Mathematica Symposium” (IMS).
In July 1995, the first IMS in Southampton, England, began an uninterrupted streak of biannual, and for some years even annual, symposia. In contrast to the Wolfram Developer/Technology/User Conferences with their venue in Champaign, Illinois, the IMSs have roamed the world. The second IMS took place in Rovaniemi near the polar circle in northern Finland, followed by Hagenberg near Linz in Austria, Tokyo in Japan, London—the one in England, Banff in Canada, Perth in western Australia, Avignon in the south of France, Maastricht in the Netherlands, and Beijing in China.
February 27, 2012 — Jon McLoone, International Business & Strategic Development
I get to show off the power of Wolfram|Alpha, Mathematica, and our other technologies to lots of interesting people, but last Friday was more interesting than usual, as David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, came to our European headquarters.
United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron with Conrad Wolfram
We have been growing consistently, and our UK location finally ran out of room for the extra staff that we were hiring, so we built a brand new set of offices on a former film studio site (I am told an underwater scene from one of the Superman movies was filmed under my office location). The Prime Minister came to perform the official opening.
February 17, 2012 — Crystal Fantry, Senior Educational Outreach Specialist
Are you looking for a great way to spend your summer? We are happy to announce the Mathematica Summer Camp 2012! Held at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, students will have the opportunity to learn Mathematica’s language, apply their skills in other disciplines, and program their very own Wolfram Demonstrations! Students will also work individually and in groups to hone their Mathematica skills.
February 17, 2012 — Wolfram Blog Team
For 22 years, Wolfram Research has been developing technology to allow subject matter experts to bring their ideas and documents to life with interactivity. This week, as part of his keynote at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, Theodore Gray, Co-founder of Wolfram Research and Founder of Touch Press, gave the first demonstration of how we’re bringing the full power of our publishing systems to mobile devices.
Here’s a video excerpt of his announcement of the Computable Document Format (CDF) for iPad:
February 15, 2012 — Abigail Nussey, Wolfram Science Summer School Event Director
The Wolfram Science Summer School (formerly the NKS Summer School) is now accepting applications for its 10th season, to be held June 25–July 13, 2012, at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, United States.
We are looking for highly motivated individuals who want to get involved with original research at the frontiers of science. Our participants come from diverse backgrounds but share a common passion to discover and explore cutting-edge ideas. Over the past ten years, participants have included graduate students, undergraduates, professors, industry professionals, artists, and even a few exceptional high-school students.
February 8, 2012 — Stephen Wolfram
Today I’m excited to be able to announce the launch of Wolfram|Alpha Pro—the biggest single step in the development of Wolfram|Alpha since its original introduction.
Over the two and a half years since we first launched, Wolfram|Alpha has been growing rapidly in content and capabilities. But today’s introduction of Wolfram|Alpha Pro in effect adds a whole new model for interacting with Wolfram|Alpha—and brings all sorts of fundamentally new and remarkable capabilities.
Starting today, everyone has access to Wolfram|Alpha Pro at wolframalpha.com. Unlike the “tourist” version of Wolfram|Alpha, though, you have to log in, and, yes, to get full capabilities there’s a subscription ($4.99/month, or $2.99/month for students). (Right now, you can try it for free with a trial subscription.)
So, what does Wolfram|Alpha Pro do?
January 25, 2012 — Wolfram Blog Team
Tips for analyzing your social networks with Mathematica, workshops for publishing with CDF, real-world solutions for your financial applications—these are just a few of the many highlights from the Wolfram Technology Conference 2011.
If you missed a talk or weren’t able to attend, we’ve now made videos of select presentations available on the Presentations and Talks section of the conference website.
January 6, 2012 — Bradley Harden, Commercial Sales Manager
Does this scenario sound familiar? You’ve created a real-time analytics interface for your internal data in Mathematica and you want to share it with your colleagues. But they don’t have, or typically need, Mathematica.
You aren’t alone. Many of our users have approached me with similar concerns. That’s why we created Wolfram Player Pro—the professional platform for running interactive applications based on Wolfram technology.
Player Pro is a high-level deployment engine for application developers. We’ve just released a new version that supports almost all the functionality of Mathematica 8, giving you everything you need to deploy your applications to your colleagues or clients. And with this version, you can not only deploy reports, applets, and other material as full-featured desktop applications or documents, but also as interactive web tools using the new browser plugin.
