Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" posited the study of cellular automata as a revolutionary new field of science. Did you agree then? Do you now? If you changed you mind, why?
I've never had a good short answer to this kind of question. It's much more of a twenty-page essay question, with a lot of subtleties to dive into. I've tangentially crossed paths with Stephen Wolfram off and on for a bit over a decade now, starting with attending a Wolfram Summer School session --
-- and every few years someone from Wolfram Research will show up for an email discussion about one interesting topic or another. I'm more of a "determined hobbyist" than a proper theorist along the lines of Ed Fredkin, though, so while I'll enthusiastically agree that _A New Kind of Science_ documents a whole lot of fascinating stuff... I might not be the best judge of whether it all adds up to something that should be called "revolutionary".
(I'm quite sure that I don't do anything "revolutionary" myself -- I just try to encourage Conway's Life research to continue. Discoveries have kept building on previous discoveries for fifty years now, and I'm just really curious to see what will happen next.)
