Blog 2

Chapter 2 of the textbook begins by reviewing the history of combinatory poetics. I found it interesting that the Dadaist poetry used the same thinking just with newspapers and other physical fragmentation methods. It made me think about the discussion we had In class before about how humans thinks and how computers think. We said that computers were designed to think like the human brain does which makes sense considering the computer is a man-made invention (less so nowadays after A.I development.) The surrealist movement came after and they were more concerned with the non-conformists and what lies in the minds subconscious. The Oulipians began to use algorithms when producing their games. These algorithms usually generated different and random rules and constraints, focusing on the form of the writing. The remainder of the chapter goes on to explain how from the start, computers have been designed to think for themselves. The RNG methods used by computers for generation of poems and letters like the love letter generator and the ppg256 programs seem to make a lot of sense. Even using already existing poems to generate even more poetry with the frequency program shows how trippy it can get. To circulate back to the beginning of the chapter, combinatory poetics prove how capable digital literature is of producing information on an infinite level.

               I decided to investigate Alan Touring Imitation Game because I’ve seen the movie before and the way it was described in the book made it seem really cool. I found a bunch of articles talking about the differences between the movie and the real thing. Turns out Alan really did marry Joan but unfortunately was tried for being homosexual and ultimately took his own life. There was also no Russian spy working with him like there was in the movie. Also Alan had a partner who developed the machine with him, when the movie gave Alan alone all the credit.