Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was an English author and poet. His most notable works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871). Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” (1871) is used in the text to explore juxtaposition and, through its translation, the problems that occur when trying to find patterns across multiple minds. Carroll’s allegorical dialogue "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" (1895) uses characters from Zeno’s Theorem, who are then used by Hofstadter to build allegorical dialogue.

Douglas Hofstadter (1945) is an American cognitive and computer scientist and the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Despite Hofstadter’s use of computers to apply scientific methodology and contributions to the field of artificial intelligence (AI), he claims little interest in technology and is skeptical of AI and the idea of an imminent singularity. In an interview for The Atlantic in November 2013, Hofstadter explained that he is only interested in a narrow definition of AI, one which seeks to understand how human consciousness and cognition function (Somers, James. “The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think.