History of Science & Technology Q&A (August 16, 2023)

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

Questions include: Do you know the history of the invention of OCR (Optical character recognition)? - With recent developments, can you talk about the history of theories of extraterrestrial life and search for extraterrestrial life? - Who do you think is the most undervalued scientist in the last 100 years? Someone who has contributed a great deal to society, but has largely gone unnoticed by the public eye? - ​Why were elite physicists (and others) reluctant to embrace computers? - I saw an interview of Ed Fredkin, where he explained how he tried to learn Richard Feynman on how to use a Commodore PET I think it was. - "There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!"–Feynman - Didn't he end up causing a hubbub at Los Alamos because he was personally repairing calculators/computers rather than the IBM person? - ​In the early-mid 60s, the Soviet Union was very seriously considering what would have been a sort of proto-internet. Do you know anything about this? - How do you think kids today would react if they were suddenly teleported 40 years in the past? - Have aliens always been referred to as "aliens"? Or did they have another name in history? - Has there been any observable changes to planets during human life on Earth? - There's a weird Catholic history of discussing ETs that are neither human nor angels. As a theoretical theological field called "exo-theology". - ​What is the oldest book that you actually use and is not a museum piece?