FOM: General Intellectual Interest

[Martin Davis]

At 10:12 AM 3/26/99 -0600, Pat Hayes wrote:

>>Dear Pat,
>>
>>Please read the TIME's articles before forming conclusions about them.
>> -Martin

>The actual articles are irrelevant to my point, which had to do with how
>these names were chosen (a process which presumably preceded the
>commissioning of the articles) and the reasons why these names are part of
>the general "culture".
>
>Pat Hayes

"Presumably" you have contacts with the TIME management that makes you
privileged to this kind of information. Judging by what I've seen of
commmittee work, I'd guess (and it's only a guess) that the names were
chosen by elimination from a larger set, and quite possibly with the help of
some of the authors. In the case of the G"odel article, the author chosen
was Doug Hofstadter and his piece is about f.o.m. and reasonably sound
technically. The Turing piece emphasizes his role as a computer pioneer,
something that people are becoming more aware of.

-Martin