By Ernest Vincent Wright (1937)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
http://spinelessbooks.com/gadsby/index.html
Hemingway
Can an algorithm write a better news story than a human reporter?
It started with little league.
By Steven Levy at Wired
Applying PID control to Media coverage of politics
(photo from wikidpedia.com)
This idea came from a student, Bernardo Limon Villarreal, who suggested recording the sounds of people on the stock market trading floor – categorizing the sounds by how they match simultaneously occuring market trends , ie., optimistic, pessimistic, up, down, neutral, panic, etc.,
A speaker system feed some of these sounds back to the trading floor in an attempt to psychologically influence traders’ behavior.
Later on I started thinking about the idea of “horse race” stories in media coverage of politics. There is a theory (conspiracy) that its in the best interest of corporate media for political races to be close. So, for example, if Republicans are leading, then the “media” will air stories which favor Democrats in an effort to sway public opinion against Republicans. A continuous feedback mechanism which tries to maintain a ‘close race’.
This idea is similar to how a phase locked loop or PID controller maintains a constant temperature given varying environmental factors. It would be interesting to build a media “machine” which uses the results of opinion polls as the sensor input and always targets a 50/50 result by producing stories which with positive or negative bias, as needed.
In some ways this represents a fundamental principle of advertising.
Ever shifting media
This morning I think about singing. And Assyrian stone reliefs.
As we hang on to the crest of evolution, media grows less permanent. Last month’s Twitter mashups are broken. The 1980’s Atrari synthesizer project gathers dust in a closet. 20th century wax cylinders locked inside museums.
Things to do. Memorize a song. Teach one to a child. This year, carve something in stone. Bury it next to a stream.
Twine
Type it out
On Finding Fiction Late In Life.
By Donald Ray Pollock, interviewed at NPR
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/17/158998083/donald-ray-pollock-on-finding-fiction-late-in-life
When he first started writing, Pollock says he typed out a story by another famous writer at least once a week in order to learn how to put dialogue together and move from scene to scene.
“John Cheever, Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Richard Yates, Denis Johnson, and the list goes on and on,” he says. “If the story wasn’t overly long, I’d type it out. And I’d carry it around with me for a week and jot notes on it, and then I’d throw it away and do another one.”
