Steven Wolfram - A New Kind Of Science
Since I had to do it for our school interface anyway I will make a duplicate here on the blog. I will probably review some more classic and not so classic design and culture books here in the near future but my review qualities are really bad so see it rather as a book exploration.
Exploration number one on this blog is about Steven Wolfram - the guy who founded Wolfram Research, Inc. a company that is better known for its flagship product Mathematica. Mathematica is a very simple programming environment for people studying mathematic functions.
The book is full of mathematics of course but the real topic are Cellular Automatons. If you are not familiar with Cellular Automatons you may have heard about John Conway´s Game of Life if not go check it out. Basically Cellular Automatons are a way to discibe how things (pixels etc) live in a world full of basic rules.
Steven Wolfram has taken this subject and made a whole new brand of science out of it - or so he claims. The book is a bible. It contains 1192 pages (yes your read it right) and has hundrets of illustrations. Steven Wolfram puts a lot of efford into making us believe that we are witnessing something truly new and unique. There are million of examples of how and where Cellular Automatons can be used to solve complex and less complex problems - even to make art. He shows every detail in thousands of mathematical equations trying to back up his claim. Yet the whole topic is so simple to understand that - if you are a bit familiar and have read the first two chapters - you have no problem to follow him along. And this is where the catch comes in. Since every page contains a lot of hyped sentences you start getting a feeling that he tries to sell you something. I still have no idea if it is because he truly believes in his findings - something I tend to do as well from time to time - or if something is fishy with the whole topic and just wants to justify the book in general. The funny thing is that just yesterday I have seen an article about nanoresearch that specifically points out that Cellular Automaton Rules where used to create the Assembly - something Steven Wolfram predicts in his three year old book.
So to sum it up - if you want to learn about Cellular Automatons this is the definite resource. If you are on the hunt for A New Kind Of Science its probably to light on hard facts WHY this could lead to a science revolution. I see as an evolution of mathematics on computer systems and would not be surprised if artificial life will be based on Cellular Automatons one day - until then an interesting book for sure.
