Future of Science & Technology Q&A (September 15, 2023)

The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: Would an alien intelligence experiencing a different slice of the ruliad (a "ruster") close to ours likely experience black holes in a similar way? - ​Is rulial space bigger than branchial space? - Maybe it's a Gaussian distribution around a point in rulial space that makes human minds? - What do you think about NASA's recently released plans to build a Moon-based radio telescope? - ​How would the signal get back to Earth from the dark side of the Moon? - Why would so many nations be interested in the Moon? - Suppose we've just gotten lucky and developed our current level of technology during a period of unusual solar calm. How do we adapt if we expect solar storms to cause havoc with our electronics, say, every few decades? - Fiber optics have reduced our vulnerability from the days when landlines were all copper. Only the power grid remains. - What does the future look like for computational language? Will it be adopted on a larger scale? - How do you anticipate biotechnology shaping the future of biomaterials and tissue engineering? - How do you see the future of information consumption? Will it all be digital? Will physical books still be relevant? Will it even be reading, or simply data chips that are inserted into the brain? - Will we ever get to a point of other mammals evolving to the intelligence level of humans?