On Apr 1, 2007, at 10:58 AM, Ron Ritzman wrote:
On 4/1/07, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Excerpt from NY Times Magazine, "Questions
for Douglas
Hofstadter", 4/1/07:
Q. Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many
students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence.
1000 quatloos says this was something that "everybody knows".
A. I have no interest in computers. The entry is
filled with
inaccuracies, and it kinds of depresses me.
And of course "everybody" is FOS.
There's no contradiction between the two statements, though.
Hofstadter's work, particularly Godel, Escher, Bach, is an enormously
popular text in theoretical computer science. Not a textbook, but a
popularizing text, and a landmark one. I read it when I was at the
beginning of a flirtation with the field, it's on the shelf of every
new media-focused professor I've ever met. It doesn't deal with
computers as such, but it's still a tremendously influential text in
that regard.
That Hofstadter himself is not interested in computers says nothing
about what his work has been influential in.
-Phil