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TextGenTex / TextGenTex

preliminary early start notes and possible musing on potentials
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Earliest Memories of Generated Text #1

Open cpressey opened 9 years ago

cpressey commented 9 years ago

(A bald attempt at making this repo seem not-abandoned, perhaps. Feel free to add your own earliest memories of generated text...)

I remember reading about a computer-generated book in an issue of Enter magazine (which was, along with 3-2-1 Contact and The Electric Company, one of the many arms of the Children's Television Workshop -- although Enter was only a magazine and did not have a TV show to go with it, I don't think) called The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed.

Actually, just did a web search for it and, apparently the publish date was 1984:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2123898.Policeman_s_Beard_is_Half_Constructed

And I'm actually not sure if that's my earliest memory, or if I had encountered Eliza before that. Eliza was great, though; the sample output printed in "More Basic Computer Games" held endless fascination for me.

Oh actually that very page can be found here:

http://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/showpage.php?page=57

MichaelPaulukonis commented 9 years ago

Racter! I've never gotten a copy of PBiHC but I've always wanted one.

There is a fascinating survey of the art in Chris Funkhauser's Prehistoric Digital Poetry

Eliza is an early, and still valid, example of how simple a convincing simulation can be. Witness elizabot v gamergate.