This fascinating TED talk by Kevin Slavin focuses on algorithms that are shaping our world in the arena of finance. But I wonder if there aren’t algorithms at work in poetry. Various flavors of “uncreative writing,” perhaps? Of course I’m being old fashioned in using the word “poetry.” There are no poems or stories, after all, only “texts.” The concept of the “text” is what makes things easier for the algorithms. (“Text” as a concept that is useless for human readers.) Theorists of the “text” are producing their own “texts” in a reader-free environment; the “reader” for them is a construct, not a person, as the writer is a construct, not a person. Reader and writer are irrelevant to the text, because the text exists (in the theorists’ world) to please the algorithm, or what the Humanities likes to call “memes.” All this constitutes, for me, a breathtaking prospect, and I mean that literally: a suffocating, homicidal prospect. This algorithmic world the anti-humanist forces are weaving all around us.
I somehow missed that you'd commented, Conrad. I have to disagree with Weinberger. Adrienne Rich and Yusef Komunyaaka throw off ideas like sparks, it seems to me. Ammons, though no longer with us, again—just consider <i>Sphere</i>….<br /><br />And Lyle—you made me spray tea all over my keyboard. Thanks for lightening up my day!
For some reason this discussion brings to mind a joke I heard years ago:<br /><br />Three people show up for a job interview–a teacher, an engineer, and an accountant.<br /><br />The interviewer calls in the teacher first. "There's just one question," says the interviewer. "How much is 2 plus 2?"<br /><br />"Well, that's easy," says the teacher. "It'
Joseph,<br /><br />I suppose the case being made by Goldsmith, Perloff for notions of the 'uncreative writer' and sanctioned plagiarism is what happens when you peddle traditional Humanities disciplines (English, Classics, Anthropology, etc.)to a generation of young people who don't read, think and write anymore. Eliot Weinberger laments that there isn't in America a single