Yeah, he'll probably regain the ability to wake up with a
woody that he can't do anything about. Listen guys, "No"
means "No" !
Rev. Odi Ferous
1st Church of the Kennedy Entry Wound (Conspiratorian)
-------------------------
Nathan C. Crowell, Dept. of Materials Science/ACRL
Worcester Polytechnic Institute E-mail: bigal@wpi.wpi.edu
"Better the pride that resides in a citizen of the world
Than the pride that divides when a colorful rag is unfurled"
- Rush,'Territories'
-------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 93 01:07:18 EDT
From: "Mitchell L. Silverman" <mitch@vesheu.sar.usf.edu>
Message-Id: <9307070507.AA02432@vesheu.sar.usf.edu>
To: SubGenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Computational fiction-writing
Okay, all you Slackers in the Institute for Computational
Theology... the gauntlet has been thrown. Whaddaya gonna do
about it? If this guy can do it for Susann, can't *we* do
it for YHVH-1?
Rev. Dkr. Mitch, KSC, usw.
Mitchell L. Silverman | "I hate quotations."
Student, New College of |
the University of South Florida | - R. W. Emerson
Reply-to: mitch@vesheu.sar.usf.edu |
--------------------
Reprinted without permission from the July 6th, 1993 Ft.
Lauderdale _Sun-Sentinel_, p. 8B, and originally from the New
York Times News Service.
Man programs computer to write novel
A decade ago, Scott French bet a few Silicon Valley friends
that a computer could write a novel. Not Tolstoy or Faulkner,
but maybe a trashy page-turner -- the sort of steamy fiction
that Jacqueline Susann, author of _Valley of the Dolls_, used
to crank out.
A rough draft within a year, he wagered. Twelve months later,
French was much wiser and $300 poorer. But that lost bet
fueled an eight-year obsession that resulted in the
publication this week of _Just This Once_.
The story of French's struggle to produce a
computer-generated, Jacqueline Susann-style novel illustrates
both the relentless advance of computer technology and its
severe limitations. His work with a supercharged Apple
Macintosh computer named Hal using so-called artificial
intelligence software -- an advanced form of programming that
tries to emulate human thought -- proved a slow
collaboration.
"Let's be honest If I'd written it myself, this book would
have been done seven or eight years ago," said French, 43, an
electronic surveillance consultant and self-taught computer
programmer.
As it worked out, he wrote about a quarter of the prose, the
computer cranked out about the same amount and the remainder
can only be described as a collaboration of man and machine.
The writing of a scene would amount to a dialogue between
French and his software. The computer would ask questions, he
would answer them and then the machine would spit out the
story, a couple of sentences at a time.
"It doesn't write whole paragraphs at a time," French said.
"You can't get up, walk away, come back and find a completed
chapter. It's not that advanced."
Much of the tone and plotting was based on thousands of rules
that French programmed into the computer, formulas he derived
by analyzing two of Susann's best-selling books, _Valley of
the Dolls_ and _Once is Not Enough_.
When two key female characters were to meet, for example, the
computer would ask French about the "cattiness factor" that
should be used in the scene. If he keyed in eight -- high
cattiness -- the computer reached into its memory to craft a
sentence that was likely to include words like "screaming" or
"shrieking."
------------------------------
Message-Id: <YgCmEpG00VoqAIMmAy@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1993 15:29:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Peter Glen Berger <peterb+@cmu.edu>
To: Chris Koenigsberg <ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu>, Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Fwd: Welcome to "Truth Serum Dating Game"
In-Reply-To: <C9r9H3.AHx.1@cs.cmu.edu>
It's finding things like this that make life worth living.
---------- Forwarded message begins here ----------
Newsgroups: cmu.cs.opinion
From: tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price)
Subject: Welcome to "Truth Serum Dating Game"
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Distribution: cmu
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1993 14:17:23 -0400
"Truth Serum Dating Game"
Chuck Woolery: (friendly interested laughter) Bachelor number one,
how'd it go the other night?
Bachelor Number One: (mumbling, eyes focused on spot four inches
above the ground) We ... had dinner and each tried to dominate the
conversation under a ... pretense of joking. Our mutual dislike grew
and grew but ... neither of us would recognize it.
Chuck Woolery: (friendly interested laughter) Super, super! Bachelor
number two?
Bachelor Number Two: (eyes closed, trembling slightly) We ... had sex
and it was ... terrible. I ... I'm so ... ashamed of myself. I can't ...
believe that I'm doing this. Why can't I have a healthy relationship ...
I want to ... kill myself.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Glen Berger <peterb@cmu.edu>
Carnegie Mellon University / University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Listen to "Swing Low Sweet Cadillac," 3-5 pm Tuesdays 88.3fm Pittsburgh!
= = = = = = = = = =
PGP 2.2 public key available on request.
A8A641 / 79 88 13 38 B3 44 E6 BD C3 2E B1 66 47 38 D6 13
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 93 15:29:01 -0400
From: Eric Haines <erich@eye.com>
Message-Id: <9307071929.AA12822@hemlock>
To: subgenius@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Subject: teledildonics comes to Oregon
>From: byrne@carson.u.washington.edu (Chris Byrne)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Date: 2 Jul 1993 05:35:37 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Originator: scivw@stein.u.washington.edu
The HITLab in Seattle just finished an education project with a Seattle Public
School class of "At Risk" youth. These students are in a special program that
aims at keeping them from dropping out of school.
Their teachers chose the topic of AIDS education for a VR experience. We had
the students come up with a concept for a VR game about AIDS and then had them
create the objects using Swivel 3-d. We then put the world in our VEOS system
and added the dynamics that the students wanted. They then visited the lab
and entered their world.
The world consisted of trying to keep from getting hit by the HIV cells while
trying to grab the safe sex icons. If you got hit, there was a car crash
sound and your fly speed was reduced. You tried to grab a condom, clean
needle, and bleach. The hardest to catch was abstinence represented by a pair
of zipped up pants moving on a random path. If you grabbed any of these
objects your fly speed increased. Great fun.
The project was a success due to the metric of class attendance. They were
all showing up.
We have other stuff in the works. I'm doing my Phd. dissertation on VR and
education.
------------------------------
End of Subgenius Digest
******************************
