bice

It's really impossible to predict which discoveries will "matter", have a direct impact on other fields, or an impact in making other mathematics or physics discoveries.

Only after a world's worth of experts look at these results and then mull over if and how their own fields are impacted by this new info will we be able to answer this question.

I'm reminded of a great TV Show, James Burke's Connections. Where discoveries in one area of science would revolutionize or fundamentally change a completely different area. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ&list=PL5HjoPOFFC...

It can take decades to really know the full significance. You know, the whole "We stand on the shoulders of Giants", well the Giants just grew a few inches all at once.

Thanks! Yea, I have used various LLMs to dig for this article, as well as Google search multiple times over the past 20 years. The article I'm remembering was 100% prior to Nvidia's CUDA release in 2007. My best guess is that it was from late 90s, but possibly early 2000s.

The article I'm remembering was not just about mathematics, but indeed all of physics and related fields. I believe it speculated that eventually distributed computing models could essentially take the world's mathematics and physics formulas and various datasets that we believe to be accurate with high degrees of confidence, and then look for patterns or trends, and then from those trends, mathematicians and physicists would be able to investigate further. Not dissimilar to Folding@Home and SETI@Home.

Keep in mind, that this is the best I can remember from 30 years ago, and I've thought about it so frequently that I am certainly misremembering some of the details. Anyways, it's always been this really compelling possibility, and I wish I could find that article that inspired me so long ago and re-read it! :) I really think it was Wired, but it's possible it was Popular Mechanics, or even an expert guest on TechTV who gave an interview. Hard to say for sure, but I've always thought it was a Wired article.

Appreciate your help though!

There was a Wired Magazine article from either the late 90s or early 2000s that made a prediction that this sort of thing would eventually be possible, likely within my lifetime. I believe the context was "distributed computing" models of the time, like SETI.

I've never been able to find that article as an adult, but I would love to know who wrote it.

Link?

One of the best (and quickest!) "business" demos I've ever seen.