Turing Test

[Ben McLeod]

In 1992 I spent three months on a secluded farm all by my lonesome, with no 
car and no visitors, just the cows in the pasture to keep me company (and 
the abundant product of their patties...)
  I had an Apple 11c and a disk with Eliza on it, and in desperation I tried 
my own little Turing Test upon it, and I gotta tell you, it was about as 
stimulating as most of the people I would have talked to in town...


>But, wait, I almost forgot, we've got our own RJJBOR/MORRIS software
>sub-systems modules that perform this task already....
>
>
>from Netsurfer Digest, Volume 06, Issue 31, Friday, September 08, 2000:
>Eliza, Meet Biz
>"Tell me more about that." Way back in the '60s, Joseph Weizenbaum,
>then an MIT professor, cooked up Eliza, a simple computer program
>that relentlessly carried on a typed conversation using a library of
>responses and the knack of identifying key words to use in its
>replies. Now, Kevin Fox has unleashed a version of this program on
>AOL's instant messaging service (AIM) and posted some of the amusing
>results. Read the transcripts, read how it was done, and then just
>shake your head. "Please go on." Another bot waiting to fool the
>unsuspecting using AIM is Biz, a program that remembers everything
>you say and regurgitates it sometimes seemingly intelligently, often
>incoherently. That we will carry on conversations with these things
>and reveal highly personal information is a poignant comment on the
>human need for someone who understands us. Is there a real therapy
>opportunity here? Logically, what we should do now is get these
>things talking to each other. Eliza, meet Biz. "Does it make you feel
>strong to use that kind of language?"
>Eliza: <http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38517,00.html>
>http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38517,00.html
>Kevin: <http://fury.com/aoliza/index2.php> 
>http://fury.com/aoliza/index2.php
>Biz: <http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,38565,00.html>
>http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,38565,00.html
>
>
>.... Just joking!
>
>   "It's a text, a text, a text, only a text" or whatever it is that
>davemarc says.
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 12:24:24 -0500
>From: Dave Monroe <monroe at mpm.edu>
>Subject: Re: GRGR Finale: "No Deposit, No Return"
>
>If you love Blicero so much, jbor, why don't you just marry him then?
>Jeez ...
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 12:33:59 -0500
>From: Dave Monroe <monroe at mpm.edu>
>Subject: Re: More Baum
>
>You know, I'm not so sure L. Frank Baum IS calling for the extermination
>of Native Americans in those editorials
>(http://www.dickshovel.com/TwistedFootnote.html).  Not exactly.  There's
>more than a little ambiguity, irony, perhaps, even, going on there.
>Almost as if he's saying, well, having mortally wounded them, might as
>well put them out of their misery ("their glory has fled, their spirit
>roekn, their manhood effaced, better that they die than live the
>miserable wretches they are").  But nigh unto sarcsatically.
>
>Note how Baum's alleged animosity is mitigated by stereotypically
>romanticized, to be sure, but seemingly admiring nonetheless comments
>like "proud spirit," "the nobility of the Redskin," "the glory of these
>Grand Kings of the forest," and so forth.  And note that "original
>owners" there, now there's a possibly incendiary sentiment in the midst
>of Manifest Destiny in action.  That final comment about "when the
>whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is
>a massacre" sounds not unlike Walter Benjamin's later comment that "evry
>documenmt of civilization is also a document of barbarism"--history
>written by the victors, indeed ...
>
>Not exactly quite the right tone perhaps to take with an editorial,
>perhaps not quite responsible editorial journalism, but ... well, think
>Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," perhaps.  Time to get me a copy o'
>The Wizard of Oz, I suppose.  Thanks!
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 10:31:08 -0700
>From: "s~Z" <keith at pfmentum.com>
>Subject: No Place To Stand
>
> >>>These interesting notions of course say more about us than they say 
>about
>God.<<<
>
>As does everything we say
>
>about God, Pynchon, GR, each other, etc., ad infinitum.
>
>"Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth."
>
>                   --Archemedes
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 13:48:56 EDT
>From: JBFRAME at aol.com
>Subject: Re: More Baum
>
>In a message dated 09/12/2000 10:30:43 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
>monroe at mpm.edu writes:
>
><< Not exactly quite the right tone perhaps to take with an editorial,
>  perhaps not quite responsible editorial journalism, but ... well, think
>  Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," perhaps.  >>
>
>I'm not sure if Baum was that sophisticated.  I think it's more a case of
>telling his readers what they wanted to hear.
>
>jbf
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 13:14:33 CDT
>From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at hotmail.com>
>Subject: Most Juvenille Quote of the Month
>
> >If you love Blicero so much, jbor, why don't you just marry him then?


  We'll move into his little cottage on Cape Canaveral and I'll get a job 
sellin TupperWare...
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