If you like music, you've made mix tapes or mix CD's for people. Of course, copyright-wise, these are on questionable ground. You could argue fair use, but than would be reaching a bit. Wouldn't it be cool if you could trade a playlist with another iTunes user, and iTunes could then check your collection and the iTunes Music Store, and then sell you the tracks you are missing?

Or maybe they are already working on it. I hope so.

11:27:47 AM    comments ()  trackback []  

I got an email yesterday telling me that my order had been shipped. And that the expected arrival date was December 24th. Cool! Those guys have probably been working their butts off to get the orders out of the door. I wish them success.

9:57:43 AM    comments ()  trackback []  

A lot of complaint seem to derive from two sources -- a lack of acknowledgement of previous peoples' work in the main text (there are quite a few citations in the notes, but those notes are much more tedious to read than the main text), and the large amount of hubris in the author's presentation. There are other specific complaints, but the previously cited two are by far the most often mentioned.

I'm trying to read the book for the cool automata work, rather than as a window into a new way to look at the world, but I am not opposed to trying out the ideas in a larger sense. I would not consider myself a scientist -- a hobbyist at best. I will say, however, that a view of the world based on computation is an interesting one.

One particular criticism reverberates in my head a bit. Wolfram was driven to study this collection of simple systems because he encountered behavior that was not necessarily predictable. It was what he found fascinating. In calling the book "A New Kind of Science," I can only guess that he wanted to stir things up a bit. There's no arguing that the title is not provocative. But is it really a new science if it is not predictive? (is it hubris for this bear of little brain to question Wolfram's judgment?) I find myself subscribing to the point of view represented in the section titled "Science" in this review:

However, there is a key point: serious science should be predictive, not just descriptive. To qualify as science that applies to the real world, I would have expected to see some kind of claim in the book which could be verified against the behavior of the real world. Note that I'm not expecting him to have actually performed the verification yet (the book has only just come out, after all), but that there should be some indication of a path that would lead to verifiable, falsifiable predictions.

I will say that I am excited to see what comes next. I have to admit that I am pulling for Wolfram's general ideas. I am hoping that something comes of it, that something new springs from the seeds that he has planted.

9:48:43 AM    comments ()  trackback []