Abstract: What’s old is old. But what’s new is also old. One could argue that there are a limited number of concepts in our world and that time simply rehashes new iterations of existing concepts. And while one might argue that’s not proof that it’s true, Douglas R. Hofstadter’s article reprinted following this introduction is one data point of evidence to support that what’s new really is old. It is 44 years old but explains something important unfolding today: AI.

Implications for practice: Reprint of this article was instigated by a routine figure reproduction request from an old article, in this case, Hofstadter’s 1982 article “Metafont, Metamathematics, and Metaphysics: Comments on Donald Knuth’s 1982 Article ‘The Concept of a Meta-Font’” from Visible Language 16.4 (see Figure 1). My memory was not good enough to recall much of Hofstadter’s article at first, so I re-read it. When I did, I immediately asked him for permission to reprint it because even though it was from years ago it so directly addressed essential issues concerning AI today. To put that in perspective, Apple computer was founded just six years prior to Hofstadter’s insightful article and is today the company with either the world’s largest or second largest market cap depending on NVIDIA’s, and NVIDIA is an AI company. To say that 44 years ago Hofstadter foresaw issues of at least economic significance, is a vast understatement.