Monday, May 14, 2007

A New Kind of Science Today it is five years since A New Kind of Science (http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline) was published. Five years is a short time in intellectual history. But already it is clear that the ideas of the book have firmly taken root, and their effects are steadily growing. There are all the usual signs of activity, in both traditional academic media and elsewhere. Indeed, by now the sheer quantity of material being generated has become quite overwhelming. It spans all the traditional sciences, and reaches into technology, the creative arts, business, philosophy and more. (See pointers at http://www.wolframscience.com.) I am continually amazed at how widespread serious study of the book has been. Particularly striking to me has been how often I have encountered leaders in some field or another, who can tell me from memory specific page numbers of the NKS book on which there is something relevant to their field. I spent nearly eleven years writing the book. And during that time I discovered thousands of results that I packed into the book and its notes. And it is nice now to see that in addition to people absorbing its overall points, there is beginning to be an increasing amount of "mining" of details from the book. It has been very tempting to devote myself to extensions and applications of ideas in the book. But instead over the past few years I have for the most part chosen to focus on building general tools. Twenty years ago one of my original motivations for creating Mathematica was to have a tool that would make it possible for me to do A New Kind of Science. And about ten years ago, as I was working on A New Kind of Science, I gradually began to realize that the foundations we had built with Mathematica would allow us to take some new bold steps. Partly this was the result of absorbing the real implications of the abstract concept of symbolic programming that lies at the heart of Mathematica. And partly it was the result of understanding--through NKS--more about the true potential of the whole computational paradigm. For ten years we worked to bring this vision to fruition. And it is very exciting to be able to say that just two weeks ago, after a huge project, with countless new ideas and a monumental effort of software engineering, we finished. And the result is a radically new version of Mathematica (http://www.wolfram.com). I think what we have done takes computing to a whole new level--and will in the end prove more significant even than the original release of Mathematica 1.0 nearly twenty years ago, with all its subsequent success. Certainly it will tremendously expand the range of potential users and uses of Mathematica in general. But for NKS it will also make possible qualitatively new kinds of discoveries. When I started--26 years ago--the investigations which led to NKS, the key programs that I used took me days or weeks to write. But now, with our new Mathematica, I can write better versions of those same programs in minutes--and work with them in a completely new dynamic way. One of the things made possible by our new Mathematica is a new interactive communication medium, showcased by The Wolfram Demonstrations Project (http://demonstrations.wolfram.com), which we launched along with Mathematica two weeks ago. The Demonstrations Project is a free resource with a broad and growing range of interactive Demonstrations. And among those already available are nearly 200 based directly on the NKS book. The new Mathematica immediately provides both a new level of tools for NKS, and new methods of communication. But the progress of NKS requires developing not only technology, but also a strong NKS community. And as part of our support for the growing NKS community, we have decided to commemorate this fifth anniversary of NKS by establishing the first NKS research prize. We have decided for the prize to select a specific problem that relates to the core mission of pure NKS: to explore, map and understand the computational universe. The details are at http://www.wolframprize.org The prize of $25,000 will be awarded to the first person or group to determine whether or not a particular Turing machine from the NKS book is universal. Before NKS, one might have thought that to do general-purpose computation would require a system elaborately built with complicated rules. But the discoveries of NKS--and the Principle of Computational Equivalence--suggest that instead such universal computation should be common, even among systems with simple rules. The purpose of the prize is to establish just how simple these rules can be in the case of Turing machines--the classic original abstract model of computation. Of course we do not know who will win the prize. But it has been exciting over the past few years to see so many talented people, both professional and amateur, and at all stages of life, enter the general field of NKS research. This June we will be holding our fifth annual NKS Summer School (http://www.wolframscience.com/summerschool), with probably our strongest group of students yet. And in July we will be holding the NKS 2007 Wolfram Science Conference (http://www.wolframscience.com/conference/2007). When I discovered the first elements of NKS, I knew it was the beginning of something large. But as the years have gone by--and now as I have been able to watch what others have done with NKS--I have gradually realized that NKS is even more important and fundamental than I had ever imagined. These are still the early years for NKS, and there is much to come, both in basic science and applications. But the NKS community is growing, and the pace of progress is quickening--and especially with our new tools, I expect the next few years to be particularly exciting. Thank you for your interest in NKS during its early years. -- Stephen Wolfram 9:08:22 PM

PaidContent on Murdoch / WSJ / Bancroft Murdoch Sends Letter To Persuade Bancrofts on DJ Bid; Assures Editorial Independence. BREAKING: Rupert Murdoch, possibly sensing little interest in his $5 billion bid for Dow Jones, has sent a 1200-word letter to Bancroft family members over the weekend, reports WSJ. He did not raise the $60 a share bid, but did outline these moves: -- Offered to add a Bancroft family member to News Corp's 15-member board if the deal goes through. -- Will establish an independent editorial board to ensure the editorial integrity of WSJ and Dow Jones's other editorial operations. -- The board would mirror the one he set up at the London Times after News Corp. acquired that paper in 1981. Approval would be required to either appoint or fire the editor of WSJ. -- News Corp. would keep current management in place, and put money into expanding Washington bureau to bolster political coverage, improve the newspaper's NYC headquarters and invest in its international operations. -- News Corp would leverage its global brands to drive international growth and expansion of the DJ and WSJ brands. -- Will invest in digital media and utilize News Corp's capabilities to extend the reach. Murdoch's rather impassioned plea: "Much has been written about me, my family and our company, some flattering, some not; some accurate, most not. Please let me assure you that, first and foremost, I am a newspaper man. I don't apologize for the fact that I have always had strong opinions and strong ideas about newspapers; but I have also always respected the independence and integrity of the news organizations with which I am associated." The full text of the letter is here. Also, Robert Thomson, editor of the Times of London, also sent a letter to Jim Ottaway, of Ottaway Newspapers explaining the proposed deal. Ottway's family controls about 6.2 percent of Dow Jones's supervoting shares, and has publicly opposed any such deal. WSJ has a special section on the bid, outlining their coverage...our coverage is here on our dedicated Dow Jones page. By rali(at)paidcontent.org (Rafat Ali). [paidContent.org] 7:38:08 PM

Asheville & San Fran Zeitgeist Smashing Pumpkins Confirm Asheville & San Fran Residencies. The Smashing Pumpkins, well, the sorta Smashing Pumpkins will release their sixth studio album, Zeitgeist, on July 10. The "reformed" Pumpkins, consisting of Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, have announced two residency runs, with nine shows in Asheville and eight in San Francisco. Each night will feature varying set lists, including old favorites as well as new tunes. Tickets will be going on sale May 20, and will available online only. Tickets for the San Fran dates will go on sale at 10am Pacific via Ticketmaster, and the Asheville shows will be available at 1pm Eastern via TicketWeb. We still wish that James Iha and D'arcy Wretzky (or even Melisaa Auf der Maur) were part of the Pumpkins reunion. Oh well... we can always dream. 06.23.07 - Ashville, NC (Orange Peel) 06.24.07 - Ashville, NC (Orange Peel) 06.26.07 - Ashville, NC (Orange Peel) 06.27.07 - Ashville, NC (Orange Peel) 06.29.07 - Ashville, NC (Orange Peel) 06.30.07 - Ashville, NC (Orange Peel) 07.02.07 - Ashville, NC (Orange Peel) 07.03.07 - Ashville, NC (Orange Peel) 07.05.07 - Ashville, NC (Orange Peel) 07.22.07 - San Francisco, CA (The Fillmore) 07.24.07 - San Francisco, CA (The Fillmore) 07.25.07 - San Francisco, CA (The Fillmore) 07.27.07 - San Francisco, CA (The Fillmore) 07.28.07 - San Francisco, CA (The Fillmore) 07.30.07 - San Francisco, CA (The Fillmore) 07.31.07 - San Francisco, CA (The Fillmore) 08.01.07 - San Francisco, CA (The Fillmore) Smashing Pumpkins MySpace [The Tripwire] 7:04:57 PM

Oligopoly Watch Dominating financial information Recent announcements of takeovers of a critical news sources by a much-criticized news organizations is causing consternation. News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch has made an offer for Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. His assault on the (primarily) family-owned business was made with an opening, hostile bid of $5 billion. News Corp. controls the New York Post, The (London) Times, The (London) Sun, and a flock of Australian papers, in addition to the Fox TV and movie holdings and several Web properties, including MySpace. The issue is not one of creeping concentration and information power. News Corp. has been an especially partisan political player in the US. Now, it is true that the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal specializes in the same kind of right-wing politics that Fox News does, for example. But the rest of the Wall Street Journal is pretty balanced. It is obviously pro-business, of course, but it isn't afraid to criticize outlandish business practices like excessive executive compensation and it has been no blind follower of Bush economic or political policies. The question is how much News Corp. will insert its Fox News approach into the non-opinion pages. We also wonder if any criticism of News Corp. business news, and it makes a lot of it, will be honestly covered. At the same time, Reuters, the European news agency, has come into play with a bid of $17 billion from Thomson Corp. Thomson was once a prèss empire (in fact it sold the Times of London to New Corp. over a decade ago) but now is involved in a variety of information businesses. Currently Thomson is a distant #3 in the world in providing financial information, while Reuters is #2. (Bloomberg is #1.) The combination of #2 and #3 would make a new #1 in the segment. Last year, Thomson bought financial news agency AFX, from Agence France Presse, a relatively small deal ($40 million). Like Bloomberg and Reuters, Thomson supplies online financial information to traders and other financial professionals. That is a market which Dow Jones, with Fox money and aggression, would like to be a bigger player in. Meanwhile, it's pick up and discard. Thomson has announced it is selling off its educational and testing division, presumably to generate money for the bid. That until is expected to bring in over $6 billion. It's no coincidence that the two major filters of financial companies are being wrested away from independent holders to major information oligopolies. Meanwhile other bidders are said to be lining up for their chance at Dow Jones. Some candidates named have been the Washington Post, the New York Times, General Electric, Bloomberg, and conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc. [Oligopoly Watch] 6:08:59 PM

You Say Party! We Say Die! You Say Party! We Say Die! Gets US Release Date. The danceable awesomeness of the Vancouver group You Say Party! We Say Die! is finally coming to the US. Well, at least their album is. Lose All The Time, the group's sophomore effort, will get a release on our shores via Paper Bag Records on August 14. For those (like us) hoping that they will be performing here to support the release, we're still out of luck. The band won't be crossing our borders anytime soon. Apparently band member Stephen O'Shea is banned from performing in the US until 2011. This makes us very, very sad. Make sure you head over to their MySpace page to give the remix of the first single, "Monster," a listen. The mix was done by The Remix Company, who have re-worked songs by The Shins, Bloc Party and CSS. It is mighty good. You Say Party! We Say Die! MySpace [The Tripwire] 5:41:37 PM