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/

[Grut]

Does anyone recall the name and author of a science fiction short story in which the experiment was tried and the monkeys immediately began to produce the complete works of Shakespear? I know I read it a good thirty years ago and it may have dated from pre-WW2.

[chb]

'All systems tend toward chaos'
Consequently, if you give the proverbial infinite number of monkeys typewriters, the one guaranteed result is an infinite number of broken typewriters. QED

[polemikos]

Give an infinite number of liberals (perish the thought) an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce a coherent sentence.

[Lost Highway]

[Sacajaweau]

And now we know where the phrase "monkeying around" came from. Except Mom made us clean up our mess....These idiots had to clean up after the monkeys!!!!

[unspun]

Objective and empirical....
The "primates" report.
You decide.

picture at rodserling.com

[gcruse]

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..."

Well, of course.  I've never seen a monkey
who could keep it's hands off the other's S.

[Cathryn Crawford]

Monkeys throw their own shit, last time I heard...

[aruanan]

Monkeys throw their own shit, last time I heard...

Yes, the old time zoos were the best. You'd stand out of range in the ape house and watch naive humans walk up and then get pelted.

[Cathryn Crawford]

LOL...sounds like an absolute blast.

[Focault's Pendulum]

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

Well of course they did....they were tired of sharing access.