Strachey love letter algorithm
Christopher Strachey wrote a combinatory love letter algorithm for the Manchester Mark 1 computer in 1952. The poems it generated have been seen as the first piece of digital literature[1] and a queer critique of heteronormative expressions of love.[2]
The algorithm
Rather than modeling writing as a creative process, the love letter algorithm represents the writing of love letters as formulaic and without creativity.[3] The algorithm has the following structure:
- Print two words taken from a list of salutations
- Do the following 5 times:
- Choose one of two sentence structures depending on a random value Rand
- Fill the sentence structure from lists of adjectives, adverbs, substantives, and verbs.
- Print the letter's closing[4]
The lists of words were compiled by Strachey from a Roget's Thesaurus.[5] Although the list of words included several variations on the word love, none of these variations made it into any of the widely circulated letters generated by Strachey's procedure.[2]
External links
References
- ^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah (1 August 2005). "Christopher Strachey: The first digital artist?". Grand Text Auto. School of Engineering, University of California Santa Cruz. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
- ^ a b Gaboury, Jacob (9 April 2013). "[Christopher Strachey]". A Queer History of Computing. Rhizome. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
- ^ Montfort, Nick; Fedorova, Natalia (2012). Small-Scale Systems and Computational Creativity (PDF). International Conference on Computational Creativity.
- ^ Link, David. "There Must Be an Angel: On the Beginnings of the Arithmetics of Rays" (PDF). p. 19. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
- ^ Sample, Mark (2013). An Account of Randomness in Literary Computing. Modern Language Association Conference. Retrieved 19 August 2016.