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/

[Consort]

.."To be, or not #@&*(_~>:;'"

[mr.pink]

...and the ones who can't write get jobs at CNN.

[aruanan]

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSo, no SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSShakeSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSpeare, huh? SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSad.

"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.

No, it was more like SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSh--SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSShi--SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSh--itSSSSSSSSSSSSSS piSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[TomGuy]

In a hundred years, some "Jackass" will decide that the monkeys were typing in code and decipher it!!!

"Hey, look, this seems to be w---i---n---d---o---w---s---9---5. We deciphered it!"

[PBRSTREETGANG]

To be fair, we don't really know how Shakespeare would've responded if he and five other people were locked in a cage with a computer in the sixteenth century.

[joesnuffy]

Typing Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare,/i>

It aint Shakespear but I think a couple wrote Tim Robbins Press Club Speech..

[T. P. Pole]

Here's a quote I've used as a tag line before:

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky-

[TomGuy]

Thee is a whole cult of this stuff:

The Parable of the Monkeys
A.k.a. The Topos of the Monkeys and the Typewriters


and, of course:

Singalong Lyrics: Theme from the Monkees

Here we come Walking down the street
We get the funniest looks from Everyone we meet.

Hey, hey we're the Monkeys, and people say we monkey around.
But we're too busy singing, to put anybody down.

We go wherever we want to, Do what we like to do.
We don't have time to get restless, There's always something new.

We're just trying to be friendly, Come watch us sing and play.
We're the young generation, And we got something to say.

Any time or any where...
Just look over your shoulder, guess who'll be standing there.

These lyrics are displayed for private singalong parties and other non-commercial use only. The songs are written by other folks and their copyrights are hereby acknowledged.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Even though the monkeys wrote senseless gibberish, the really senseless idiots are the researchers behind this project. If a case for evolution is to be made through this line of research, it is negated by such ill constructed experiments.

[mjohnq]

I bet it still out-sells Hillary's new book.

[neutrino]

What isn't mentioned is that the work was graded...and got a "B"...and then the monkeys started tossing around more feces....so the school raised the grade to an "A" and awarded the alpha male a degree in liberal arts, Summa Cum Laude.

[blackdog]

Six months, a computer, and a big mess?

I guess we now know how the Democratic Underground was born......

[Rich_E]

Thisssssss issssssss Seriessssss!

[Texas_Jarhead]

wait, this isn't about the state department?

[Gorzaloon]

"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.

They probably have an IT Department like the one I have at Work. I certainly have had those urges from time to time. So far I have been able to surpress them, but that's only because I cannot get into the room that has the servers.

[parcel_of_rogues]

Well either they were 'pissed' nobody installed Donkey Kong
or they were holding out for an Imac.

[sd-joe]

>> "To be fair, we don't really know how Shakespeare would've responded if he and five other people were locked in a cage with a computer in the sixteenth century."

I'll bet it would not have involved a rock and p'ing on the keyboard.

Just a guess.

[Chi-townChief]

I think the original theory applied to a random letter generator, not monkeys.

[sd-joe]

And the real kicker is the word "infinite".

Since infinite is not attainable, any speculation concerning what could happen at infinite, is fair game. Let the imagination run wild. No one could disprove it.

[LiteKeeper]

YEC read later