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REVELATIONS FROM THE CRYPT

The Real Story

2003-05-09, 1:20 p.m.

Typing Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare

LONDON - Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.

Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

In a project intended more as performance art than scientific experiment, faculty and students in the university's media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques.

Then, they waited.

At first, said Phillips, "the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.

"Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard," added Phillips, who runs the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.

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You can read the full article as I did on Yahoo here.

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Here is the REAL reason why I think the monkeys were beating the hell out of the computer and pissing and shitting on it:

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--Grue

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(c) 2003 by Simon la Grue