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Topic: Typing monkeys and Shakespeare update (Read 1083 times) |
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rhinoceros
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My point is ...
  
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Typing monkeys and Shakespeare update
« on: 2003-05-10 09:53:44 » |
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Typing Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare
Jill Lawless, May 9, 8:56 AM (ET)
http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20030509/D7QTQB000.html
LONDON (AP) - Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.
Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will produce a mess.
Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.
"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."
A group of faculty and students in the university's media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques. Then, they waited.
At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.
"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.
Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in - not quite literature.
Phillips said the project - funded by England's Arts Council rather than by scientific bodies - was intended more as performance art than scientific experiment.
The notion that monkeys typing at random will eventually produce literature is often attributed to Thomas Huxley, a 19th-century scientist who supported Charles Darwin's theories of evolution. Mathematicians have also used it to illustrate concepts of chance.
The Plymouth experiment was part of the Vivaria Project, which plans to install computers in zoos across Europe to study differences between animal and artificial life.
Phillips said the experiment showed that monkeys "are not random generators. They're more complex than that.
"They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there."
The monkeys' output:
http://www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/publication/
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David Lucifer
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Enlighten me.
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Re:Typing monkeys and Shakespeare update
« Reply #1 on: 2003-05-10 10:37:06 » |
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Quote from: rhinoceros on 2003-05-10 09:53:44
"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.
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That is *exactly* why I hated using the public computer labs at university.
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MoEnzyme
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infidel lab animal
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Re:Typing monkeys and Shakespeare update
« Reply #2 on: 2003-05-12 01:42:08 » |
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Quote from: David Lucifer on 2003-05-10 10:37:06
Quote from: rhinoceros on 2003-05-10 09:53:44 "Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.
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That is *exactly* why I hated using the public computer labs at university.
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[Jake] David, they obviously need someone like you at Microsoft to point these things out. The only I-loo should be a private one person access only one, not a porta potty public one. Who wants to have to personally disinfect a keyboard before they will feel comfortable typing on it? I mean they SAY its an automatic disinfectant, but did you actually SEE it happen? And what if some terrorist joker decides to give himself SARS and while in full blown contagion goes in there before you. I mean are you going to play Russian Roulette then by all means lets be honest and pull out the revolver!! Obviously M$ wants to become known as the "buffoon software company". Obviously their marketing research simply forgot that there was just a MAAAJJOR SARS outbreak in Taiwan. The whole island. We aren't talking just cities anymore. Oh, yeah, and by the way, M$ morons!!! some of the latest news is about how SAR is passed most efficiently through human waste. Forget about typing monkeys and Shakespeare! My Space Monkeys TM will know better than using the I-Loo, do you? Apparently M$ shares the same brain damage that affects at least one major world leader. Talk about poor market timing that even many idiots could figure out. We aren't doing so hot in the long term survival race, around a while, you just may live to see the end of Microsoft. Down the toilet so to speak!
Love,
-Jake
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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