Years ago I gave a reading at Rensselaer Polytechnic U. and one of the
gentlemen who showed up was a research fellow working on the generation
of poetic language via computer. We had an interesting talk and he
showed me samples of the work that had been written by his program. It
was all selfless, gnomic, steinesque.
In short, David, I knowetry.
When I was truly a kid in Jr. High, my class was chosen to have unlimited
access to a computer terminal connected to a creaky mass of technology
that filled up the basement of the nearest U.
On the sly (when the math teacher was out of the room) I programmed the
damned thing to crank out Christmas cards with a text that went:
ro ho yo ho
or something like that (I can definitely vouch for the ro ho part--ro
meaning robotic ho--and ho meaning ho ho, etc.--'Twas the season for
ho's).
And it sputtered out three or four on its long sheets of paper before
rattling to silence in a burst of asterisks (the equivalent of giving me
hell for abusing it).
Even then I suspected and and I somewhat knewetry, but thanks to you,
David--now I knowetry.
But give us another 50 years and we'll all be on the scrap heap if we
aren't already.
Freddy
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