Wolfram's New Kind of Science Now Online

gotscheme writes "When Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica fame self-published A New Kind of Science in 2002, he raised the suspicions of many in scientific communities that he was taking advantage of a lot of other people's work for his sole financial gain and that he was going against the open nature of academia by using restrictive copyright. Yesterday, Wolfram and company released the entire contents of NKS for free on the Web (short registration required). Perhaps Wolfram is giving back to the scientific community; perhaps it is simply clever marketing for a framework that is beginning to gain momentum. For any matter, the entire encyclopedic volume is online, and this appears to be a positive step for scientific writing."

Comments

Not Interested

[Rick and Roll]

Sure, Wolfram may be a very successful entrepeneur, but that does not qualify him as an expert in the field of science or as a writer. The ratings at Amazon.com are very low. I don't think that this book is a big release, I think it is just an experiment.

He may be a smart guy, but I think he might just be recycling old material and calling it the Next Big Thing (TM). Again, I won't find out unless this book catches on, because most of my book purchases are by word of mouth or by trusted source (sorry, Slashdot, you do not fit into this category), and if it's going to get to me and my small circle of friends and acquiantences, it had better start selling.

But good luck to the guy. At least he's writing a book, rather than writing all of his prose in Slashdot comments!

I'm voting for clever marketing

[syphax]

Props to Wolfram for this, but it looks like clever marketing- as far as I can tell, you can't, say, download a pdf of a chapter; you pretty much have to go page by page. So on a practical level, it's a big ad.

Also, you need Mathematica to run the programs.

So, if you get hooked by the online text, Wolfram can count on 1 book sale, and maybe 1 Mathematica license (if, like me, you don't study/work somewhere with a site license).

Re:New Kind of Hype?

[LnxAddct]

By comparison, Wolfram is just a bored dilletante scribbling on the back of an envelope.

And you the mighty gowen have contributed so much to society. Wolfram is indeed a genius.He is up there with the likes of Stephen Hawking, just in a different field. He did build some of his work off of other people's, but that is what science is. Modern Physics was built off of Newton's work which was then in turn added to by others until it has reached its amazing point in this day and age where we can send a small robot to a crater on a planet millions of miles away. Quantum Mechanics is also commonly contributed to Albert Einstein who's work was then contributed to by others. But before Einstein there was Max Planck. The reason the human race has progressed as such is because we learn from our predecessors and build on that knowledge. Yes Wolfram used a lot of work based on others (and he cites it all), but he has also studied Cellular Automata for somewhere between 12 to 20 years.The guy is smart and I've read this entire book cover to cover and have referenced it several times. He makes insights into the field that no one has ever mentioned before. And after hearing him speak at one of his conferences in New York I have the upmost respect for him and his brilliance. If you still don't believe me, read the book, or just go to his website and browse it. Even better, try to duplicate Mathematica and see how far you get.I'm not trying to start a flame or anythign like that, but unless you are really familar with this guy then you can't really comment. I've followed his works for at least 5 years now.
Regards,
Steve
P.S. Another guy worth checking out who is affiliated with Wolfram is Eric Weisstein who has a great website and sells an encyclopedia for mathematics, which I also own and couldn't live without :)