There are two ways to interpret what Hinton says: a) the algorithms are unimportant because all that we needed was computation b) the algorithms were ahead of

There are two ways to interpret what Hinton says: a) the algorithms are unimportant because all that we needed was computation b) the algorithms were ahead of their time I think that it is actually the latter that is true; in the same way that electricity was a precondition for computation. Babbage designed the difference engine and the analytical engine before they could realistically be implemented, this doesn't mean the design was unimportant.