Thursday 3 January 2019

The death of creativity

I wrote this 14.3.2004 but thought I'd paste it here before AI claims copyright. 

Location: Typing pool 
Typing pool?
Bear with me.
Typewriters: Infinite
Typewriters?
OK, PCs: Infinite
Monkeys: Infinite
Monkeys?
Primates: Extinct now. Hairy. Can’t type.
Can’t type?
They’re not so much typing as hitting keys at random, that’s the point.
Time allowed: Infinite
Expected results: The entire works of Shakespeare plus every other piece of literature that could possibly be written ever. (Includes drivel; magazine articles; biographies including those of people not yet born; major works of fiction; drama and philosophy; all text books except those including mathematical formulae; dogma; manifestos; TV listings pages; occasional recipes and LOTS of poetry, infinite amounts of it, in fact all the poetry you could ever write and more). So, do you think you can build it?
No problem.
Can you build it, run it then publish and copyright its entire output?
Yup.
And how long will this take?
Hmmm. Give me a month.
Brilliant. And then, can you build me one that does art?