Typing Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare

AP | 5/09/03 | JILL LAWLESS

[kattracks]

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."

___

On the Net:

The monkeys' output: www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/publication/

[RandallFlagg]

I'd bet that their typng is still beeter than mime.

[Lazamataz]

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSo, no SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSShakeSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSpeare, huh? SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSad.

[martin_fierro]

At least the monkeys had the sense not to plagiarize.

[ladtx]

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.

Unbelievable. Didn't anyone ever tell these people the monkey and typewriter thing is only a figure of speech?

[martin_fierro]

LO: LO9 LOO LOL!

[dd5339]

Someone better ping the evolutionists. Looks like a bunch of monkeys just disproved Darwin.

Semper Fi

[Pan_Yans Wife]

"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.

It never occurred to them that this would be the most logical event? Why didn't they put the plastic protectors on the keys, first?

[Tennessee_Bob]

Sure - they don't produce Shakespeare, but they did create that other website.

[cincinnati65]

"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."

Obviously inspired by a visit to the New York Times Online.

[Loyalist]

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will produce a mess.

Or a War on Drugs thread.

[TomGuy]

Give an idiot at a university a federally subsidized grant, and you get the idiot trying to get a barrel of monkeys trying to create Shakespeare on a typewriter.

Elect an idiot to the Congress or Commons, and you get a politician who gives a university idiot a subsidized grant to get a barrel of monkeys to try to create Shakespeare on a typewriter.

Let people vote for officials, and they tend to elect ... [I'll stop my analogies before I get into real trouble...]

[dorothy]

Whoa. "Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typwriters" and "[t]hey were quite interested in the screen"? No wonder the experiment flopped. The monkeys weren't interested in randomly creating literatire, but art.

[just me]

You beat me to it...LOL

[Sacajaweau]

How many high paid idiots does it take to watch six monkeys make a mess!!!

[TC Rider]

Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Hasn't AOL pretty much disproved this theory?

[mr.pink]

Typing Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare

No, they write Dickens....

"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times..."

[Sacajaweau]

In a hundred years, some "Jackass" will decide that the monkeys were typing in code and decipher it!!! That'll be a million dollar grant!!! What fools we are for supporting idiots.

[kattracks]

Some of them even write for the media.

[RogueIsland]

"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.

Was he talking about Salon.com columnists?