What is a Strangeloop?
The concept of a Strangeloop was developed by Pulitzer prize-winning author and ruminator on the nature of consciousness and identity, Douglas Hofstadter.
Hofstadter developed the term while arguing that the phenomenon of self-awareness is best explained by an abstract model based on symbols and self-referential "loops," which, as they accumulate experience, create high-level consciousness.
According to Hofstadter, to be intelligent a system must have a self-referencing feedback loop, learn from that feedback and adapt accordingly.
The Strangeloop management team is the same team that founded IronPoint Technology, a leader in dynamic content publishing systems for enterprise clients, acquired in 2006. As IronPoint leaders, the team encountered challenges maintaining performance for dynamic, highly interactive web applications while extending the application to thousands of users.
Solving the ASP.NET performance problems in the network, instead of optimizing the application code, required an intelligent, self-referencing device that could learn and adapt, in real time – what some might consider a ‘strangeloop’. Strangeloop Networks was founded to build just such an appliance. The choice of company name was obvious.
