(no subject)

[pynchonoid]

> --- Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>sss,,    ,,,, lqaaate ad do be

Give a monkey a computer, and what do you get?  

David Adam, science correspondent
Friday May 9, 2003
The Guardian 

 It is a favourite question of pub philosophers
everywhere. If you gave an infinite number of monkeys
an infinite number of typewriters, would they
eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare? 

The answer to this, mathematicians assure us, is yes.
But now someone has attempted to put the theory to the
test. Admittedly the British academics involved in
this unusual project did not have an infinite number
of typewriters, nor monkeys, nor time, but they did
have six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys, and one
computer, and four weeks for them to get creative. 

The results of this trial at Paignton zoo in Devon
were more Mothercare than Macbeth. The macaques -
Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan -
produced just five pages of text between them,
primarily filled with the letter S. 

There were greater signs of creativity towards the
end, with the letters A, J, L and M making fleeting
appearances, but they wrote nothing even close to a
word of human language. 

"It was a hopeless failure in terms of science but
that's not really the point," said Geoff Cox ,of
Plymouth University's MediaLab, who designed the test.
So what were the academics trying to achieve? "It
wasn't actually an experiment as such, it was more
like a little performance," said Mr Cox. 

The project - which was paid for with £2,000 of Arts
Council money - was intended to emphasise differences
between animals and machines, he went on. "The monkeys
aren't reducible to a random process. They get bored
and they shit on the keyboard rather than type." The
computer was protected with a perspex box, with holes
for the monkeys to poke fingers through to hit the
keys. 

Vicky Melfi, a biologist at Paignton zoo, said that
the macaques were ideal animals to use. 

"They are very intentional, deliberate and very
dexterous, so they do want to interact with stuff you
give them," she said. "They would sit on the computer
and some of the younger ones would press the keys."

...continues:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,952259,00.html>




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