Rating: 
Summary: Pompous and nearly useless
Review: This book is a wonderful demonstration of the use of grayscale, and not much more. I will provide two of many examples that support the title of this review.1.) Chapter 10 pp 552 a section with the purpose of defining randomness. Stephen begins by outlining the failure of previous attempts to define randomness. Then he leads the reader to believe he has found the answer. Then he proceeds to identically fail to advance the notion of randomness in any way whatever. 2.) Chapter 2 pp 223. "One might think that starting from such randomness no order would ever emerge." Who thinks that? Certainly not I. This book is replete with examples of Stephen starting from a baseless assumption and then showing how his book lifts us from this state of ignorant belief to novel enlightenment. When if fact, not a single possibly worthwhile idea in the book is original to him. Signed : Ph. D. from MIT and definitely not a layman.
Rating: 
Summary: 1192 pages with so little input
Review: I would not say I am disappointed since I had the chance to read the book without paying for it and I have only spent some hours of my spare time. I was very keen to read the book that was announced as a revolution. Yes, I read about 150 pages and discovered that although there was some interesting thing in it I could not find the point. After 150 pages I browsed through the other chapters trying to find something new but there was nothing new. Why did he stop writting after 1192 pages? With some more examples he could easily blow it up to 10000 pages but he could tell the whole story on 150 pages. Nice to know that simple things can lead to complex output but what else did he say in his book? Where is the new science?
Although Wolfram is considered to be a genious I do not think he is a good writer: his writing style is very poor and considering he worked 10 years on this book I must say it's not good enough.
My advise for people who want to read this book: forget about everything you have heard about this book and about the author. Do not expect to much and you will not be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: A new kind of scientifc debate
Review: Stephen Wolfram's book is very interesting. I am still reading it and waiting for the specialized reviews of its most difficult parts. I am a layman, not a scientist, but here are my preliminary tentative thoughts. I just want to make clear that ad hominen atacks directed at Wolfram's inflated ego or business mentality should not distract us from the merit of his ideas. Stephen Wolfram wants to call our attention to the computational structure of the universe. This is an interesting idea, one that may have the merit in engaging darwinists, intelligent design theorists and even creationists in the discussion. In my view there should be a place for an open, transparent and cordial interchange between all these lines of thought, instead of the academia power games that we see taking place. All these theories and models have scientific merit and scientific weaknessess. Creationism may have its flaws, but so has darwinism. In fact, Wolfram is very hard on darwinism, since it denies that natural selection can account for the complexity we see in the universe. This cepticism he shares with creationists and intelligent design theorists. This only goes to show that many of the criticisms that have been directing against evolution by creationists and intelligent design theorists have a clear scientific basis, and cannot be dismissed as just a mere by product of ideological bias. I know many darwinians wish that could be the case, but it simply isn't. But then Stephen Wolfram rescues evolution and denies creationism and intelligent design by stating that evolution results from simple program rules that generated the complexity we see in the universe, in the course of some billion years. This move allows evolution to survive the criticismm directed at it by creationists on the basis of the gaps in the fossil record and the insufficiencies of random mutations and natural selection. Gradualism and stasis, already much depleted by decades of academic erosion, suffer a strong blow if Wolfram's notions prove right. Howhever, according to Stephen Wolfram, darwinism may be dead, but evolutionary theory is alive and well. There are doubts, however, as to if simple rules can really account for more than "complex but not specified information" and if this kind of information can account for biological mechanisms such as the human brain or the "flagellum bacterianum". In fact, intelligent design doesn't deny that simple rules can generate complexity. It just claims that complex specified information and irreducible complexity cannot be purchased without intelligence. There are no free lunches here (William Dembski). Creationism will always try to capitalize on the intelligent design criticism of both darwinism and Wolfram's simple rules for a complex world and computational equivalence. It will reinforce its criticism of darwinism, now stronger than ever, and explore other fields such as flood geology, electromagnetic decay, white hole cosmology, flawed assumptions in radiometric dating, etc., in order to advance its theoretical model. In spite of including the notion of a God creator, something that should not be dismiss a priori, creationism should be considered as scientific as quantum mechanics, possible universes theories, inflated cosmologies, big bang theories, black hole universes, etc., All this theories, includind creationism, try to make sense of empirical data and make predictions about the universe, although none of them can claim any direct evidence on its favour. In my view there should be ample room for a fruitful discussion of all these issues in the academia, with careful "disclosure requirements" concerning hidden assumptions. Creationism, for instance, has never hidden its own assumptions. However it is now clear that darwinism has been capitalizing on hidden naturalistic assumptions that are metaphysical in nature, not scientific, not to say that they are question begging. We need not just a new kind of science, but also a new kind of scientific debate.
Rating: 
Summary: Can the universe really be a Cellular Automaton??
Review: Whatever else it does, ANKOS should be credited with bringing up important issues in modeling and simulation to the general public. With all the controversy it raises, there has been little or no mention of possible alternatives to cellular automata (CA) as models of the universe. The fact is that CA suffer from a fundamental failing which is the synchronous and parallel transition of all cells in a fixed time step. Imagine that the universe is (modelled by) a CA and that we have at least as many cells as atoms and that the time step is a nanosecond (both very conservative). Now also imagine a coordinating mechanism (global clock) that forces all these zillion cells to exchange information (with their neighbors) and change their state --in exact unison -- every nonosecond. Chip makers are encountering this "scalability" problem as chip densities increase -- the coordinating signal can't reach all cells as fast as the gigahertz clock requires. An althernative is to allow cells to work asynchronously in a less rigid time structure. This alternative, discrete event cellular spaces, is discussed in Theory of Modeling and Simulation, Academic Press, 2000. For interesting implementations, and ANKOS-equivalent graphics, see for example [URL]
and [URL]. Cellular spaces have the uniformity of structure that is a natural framework within which the evolving heterogeneity of the universe might be explained or emulated. But the rigid coordination and timing requirements of the CA need to be replaced by more loosely coupled and simulation-efficient structures to be workable as credible explanations of nature on its largest, and highest resolution, scale.
Rating:
Summary: Nice cellular automata pictures, otherwise useless
Review: If you are looking for a collection of cellular automata pictures with lots of useless text between the pages this might be your book. Other than that it is another boring attempt of claiming revolution. The text is high-level, never gets to the point and hell will probably freeze until you'll meet someone that made it through that book. Not worth reading but its definitely something to put on your bookshelf if you want to make a geeky impression on your visitors.
Rating: 
Summary: Fresh outlook on science
Review: I found this book to be a fresh outlook on science. Yes, it does have a couple faults such as its enormous size and dogmatic writing...but all in all I found this a very good book. It's not afraid to break some rules. It points out that biology may be a better microscope than physics to view our world. I would say that this book is a cross between THE TAO OF PHYSICS and STILL PITYING THE FOOL.
Rating:
Summary: 1687 All Over Again
Review: Well, it's 1687 all over again and the establishment is at Newton's throat. Oops, it's not Newton or the Principia this time but Wolfram and his equally groundbreaking book, A New Kind of Science. You'd think we'd learned not to fly in the face of genius. Guess not. No doubt it's partly due to Stephen Wolfram's lack of humility in telling us he has just demolished conventional science. My gut instinct (not finished the book yet) is that he has and he's done it with a result that should have been obvious. It stings that it wasn't, so some are saying his discoveries are nothing new. Nothing new? That extremely simple algorithms or rules can produce results so complex they mimic the complexity of nature -- in a way unachievable or analyzable by our most sophisticated mathematical tools??? That from this fact universal phenomena can be identified? Never once had I heard that before reading Wolfram's book. It sure sounds like a revolution to me. No, Wolfram's not very humble but is humility really necessary when you give the world such gifts? It would be a waste of genuis for such a man to spend time pretending he's not as smart. After the first night of reading Wolfram's book, I woke with images of a new world full of synthesized "natural" products that are virtually unimaginable today. Whether this pans out remains to be seen, but I'd bet on it. Meanwhile, I am being very careful as I turn the pages of A New Kind of Science. I don't want to damage it. I want to be able to pass on to my grandchildren an undamaged first edition of the book that changed the world. If you want to be where science is happening, read Wolfram's book. J. R. Lankford
B.S.E.E. and lover of physics
Rating:
Summary: Interesting ideas, poor presentation
Review: Wolfram certainly has some interesting ideas, but he certainly could have done a better job presenting them. The book contains a good overview of cellular automata and useful illustrations, but the text is repetitive and in places it is somewhat boring as a result. You quickly develop a habit of skipping over any paragraph which begins "Before this book was published..." or any of the countless places where Wolfram repeats the exact same argument about complex behavior arising from simple rules. Plus, the main text is written as if no one else has ever done work in this field. (This oversight is partially rectified in the extensive notes, but no indication is ever made in the main text that the notes exist. One might read the whole main text before discovering the notes!) I haven't finished the book yet (it's a long book!) but it is an interesting read if you have any interest in the subject. If you don't already have an interest in cellular automata, then this is probably not the place to start as Wolfram's ponderous, repetitive style will quickly dampen your interest. Update: I never got around to finishing the book, as it became more repetitive as it went along. Also, although I was at first excited about the notes in the back, they turned out to be less useful than I had anticipated and certainly don't do an adequate job of pointing one to other sources.
Rating:
Summary: Wolfram Owes an Apology
Review: In his interview with "The Daily Telegraph" [May 15 2002] titled as "Is this man bigger than Newton and Darwin?" Wolfram remarks on his book as follows: "If other people don't get it, it's their problem, not mine." This is the most horrible attitude toward science I have ever encountered. He makes very little effort to present his what-so-called "New Science" to his peers. If one browses through all the reviews written here, one realizes that those who praise Wolfram are NOT SPECIFIC at all about why he is so great except that he has in general touched almost every aspect of modern science, a non-sense view. On the other hand, readers who have nagative viewpoints of the book are very SPECIFIC about their opinion and they express why Wolfram's book is neither revolutionary nor new. Like most people out there I believe that Wolfram owes a big apology to the scientific community and those non-expert enthusiasts who have a huge thirst for science but misled by non-scientists like Wolfram.
Rating:
Summary: Good Science, Good Writing
Review: Stephen Wolfram certainly did a nice job of putting science and literature together. Most scientists don't clearly communicate their ideas, but Stephen Wolfram certainly does. I also think that he really did change the future. This science will affect everything - almost everything. "A lot of things can be predicted," he writes, "from this new kind of science." Read the book and you'll think the same thing that I did.
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