February 5, 2004—Stephen Wolfram’s groundbreaking book A New Kind of Science is now available online, with complete text and images, full searchability, 30,000+ links, and many other enhanced features.
When A New Kind of Science was released in book form in May 2002, it immediately generated a flurry of interest in the scientific and technical community and outside. In the 18 months since, what has become known as “NKS” (after the initials of the book title) is rapidly becoming established as a major growth area.
There has been a major conference, with another conference being held this April. Courses are being taught about NKS at major universities. Well over a hundred technical publications related to NKS have appeared, and there is now ample evidence of accelerating NKS research activity in many parts of the worldwide scientific and technical community.
The Wolfram Science Group has sponsored several major initiatives to support the development of NKS. Many are centered on the wolframscience.com website, which receives thousands of visits every day from scientists, technologists, students, and interested members of the public around the world.
Today marks the unveiling of a major, much-requested new feature of wolframscience.com: complete online access to all 1,280 pages, 1,000+ illustrations, and 1,350 technical notes in Stephen Wolfram’s book.
Highly praised for its layout and art-quality printing, the book continues unabated in its success. NKS|Online is intended to supplement the printed book with features that can be achieved only online. Inevitably it lacks the physicality and high-resolution graphics of the printed book, but it allows new kinds of access to the depth of material in the book.
NKS|Online allows visual and textual browsing, as well as navigation through the book’s nearly 15,000 index entries, and full-text searching. Each page of the original book has been enhanced with links to related technical notes, downloadable programs, and other elements.
The result is a unique resource for students, scholars, and casual readers, freely accessible worldwide.