On Apr 1, 2007, at 10:58 AM, Ron Ritzman wrote:
On 4/1/07, Fastfission fastfission@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