Godel, Escher & Bach ...

Back in 1979, Douglas Hofstadter wrote Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, a seminal book on AI, machines and what it means to be human, issues becoming ever more relevant in the year of our lord 2021. The reason for discussing this great work is the fact it was the first book yours truly read regarding computers and systems due to the fact I was the first designer director for Gartner Group back in the day, the first company to track and analyze how technology was changing how the world does business. 

By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through short stories, illustrations, and analysis, the book discusses how systems can acquire meaningful context despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discusses self-reference and formal rules, isomorphism, what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of "meaning" itself.

In response to confusion over the book's theme, Hofstadter emphasized that Gödel, Escher, Bach is not about the relationships of mathematics, art, and music—but rather about how cognition emerges from hidden neurological mechanisms. One point in the book presents an analogy about how individual neurons in the brain coordinate to create a unified sense of a coherent mind by comparing it to the social organization displayed in a colony of ants.[1][2]

The tagline "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll" was used by the publisher to describe the book.[3]

Seems Alvy Ray's Pixel, another gem without question, vamps off on GEB big time. :)

Kurt Godel

Circle Limit (Heaven and Hell) - Escher

Little Fugue in g Minor - Bach

Hofstadter also wrote I am a Strange Loop, a query into recursion, the notion of what "I" really means and how fractals fit into the grand scheme of things. :)

In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.

— Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, p. 363

Another excellent read without question.