Wolfram's cellular automaton is essentially a glorified checkerboard, with the initial data a series of checkers, red or blue at random, placed on the first row. Otherwise, fill the space with red. Wolfram reluctantly admits that he is dealing with rather cosmic stuff that is potentially in the same league as quantum mechanics. And yet he probably won't explore any of its applications, like finding out how snowflakes grow or how complexity emerges in living cells. If somebody else will do it, I don't want to do it.
Life is short.
There are so many things one can do. These days, there are many things begging for Wolfram's attention. It does a computation in applied mathematics faster than any previous program. SMP's creation produced a legal conflict with Caltech over who owned the rights. When people say silly things, the problem is to understand why they are saying them.