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The Truth about Monkeys and Typewriters


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from cbc.ca

 

Writing great literature no monkey business

Last Updated Fri, 09 May 2003 14:51:36

LONDON - Professional and aspiring writers can relax, knowing that not even a great editor would be able to save the copy produced by a group of monkeys in Britain.

 

A group of students and professors at the University of Plymouth set up an experiment to test the idea that an infinite number of monkeys, working on an infinite number of typewriters, would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

 

Six Sulawesi crested macaques at the Paignton Zoo were set up with a single computer for a month.

 

"The first thing they did was to bring a large stone and try to smash up the computer," said Mike Phillips, director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology. "But I think that can be seen as a very definite act of creativity."

 

Between bouts of attacking and even defecating on the machine, Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages, mostly consisting of S.

 

Later passages came to include A, J, L and M. Not a sonnet could be mined from the bunch. No limericks, either.

 

Phillips said the monkeys aren't very good in English.

 

He defended the experiment as neither a waste of effort nor money. The project was endowed with about $5,000.

 

The experiment was set up as part of a larger project.

 

And even if there was little an editor could do with the results, the monkeys have found a publisher. Their collected works will be printed as Notes Towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

 

 

 

Written by CBC News Online staff

 

useless thread number goobledygock/ blame it on the rain.

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