Wil Shipley on TED 2010: Wolfram uses conversation tracking numbers

wilshipley.com

38 points·mark_h··6 comments

I have to ask: Did you completely skip the part about zombies? Because, to me, that was far more interesting then how Wolfram keeps track of things.

I think what I'm really trying to say here is: There are many funny/interesting anecdotes in this post and singling one out doesn't do the rest of them justice.

Fair call I guess; the Wolfram anecdote just resonated with me personally! I thought that it had several interesting snippets, but wasn't sure that "Wil's overview of TED" would be that interesting so it needed something else.

But yeah: Zombies, damn interesting!

Note to others: if you want to find the 'zombies' part, search for [Mark Roth], because the word 'zombie' isn't used.

shipley on Wolfram: "If he were a patent-troll I'd have no patience for him, sure, but he's a man of science in the truest sense of the word."

Wolfram is extremely litigious: http://cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/2002-July/005692.html

He's also notoriously skimpy on giving credit for ideas.

while I haven't heard any specific claims of patent troll-ism, I suspect he has a ton of patents on Mathematica and Alpha.

Case in point on credit for ideas: Shipley reports him saying he invented a parameterization of shell designs in nature. That subject got a few pages in a Richard Dawkins book, and I'd remember if Dawkins had credited Wolfram. (Maybe Wolfram got it independently. I don't know.)

I'm just glad he didn't tell any Matt Groening stories. That would have been over the top.

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