When the book first came out, I remember there was an air of skepticism surrounding some of its concepts. Has the view towards the book by the science community changed much in the years since? I'm not a physicist, but have always been interested in Wolfram's work out of curiosity from a comp sci perspective.
Some ideas have already become commonplace, others less so.
Simple programs as 'language primitive' for modeling was criticised by many, but is now becoming popular, particularly in biology (see for example http://fontana.med.harvard.edu/www/Documents/WF/Papers/signa...)
General ideas like computational irreduciblity and instrinsic randomness are finding increasingly direct evidence in the physical world (http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/fruit-flies-have-free-will-13...)
In terms of exploring the raw computational universe, lots of people in architecture and generative design are doing related things now.
Unforunately most people are unaware of the fundamental ideas that underly all of these threads.
Comments
When the book first came out, I remember there was an air of skepticism surrounding some of its concepts. Has the view towards the book by the science community changed much in the years since? I'm not a physicist, but have always been interested in Wolfram's work out of curiosity from a comp sci perspective.
Some ideas have already become commonplace, others less so. Simple programs as 'language primitive' for modeling was criticised by many, but is now becoming popular, particularly in biology (see for example http://fontana.med.harvard.edu/www/Documents/WF/Papers/signa...) General ideas like computational irreduciblity and instrinsic randomness are finding increasingly direct evidence in the physical world (http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/fruit-flies-have-free-will-13...) In terms of exploring the raw computational universe, lots of people in architecture and generative design are doing related things now. Unforunately most people are unaware of the fundamental ideas that underly all of these threads.