Books.htmlTEXTStMl%E>) JanusNode: A Window To Janus


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[I am an associate of Amazon.com, which means that I get a small cut if I direct buyers to them. If you like your JanusNode, wish to read more, and wish to thank me for my work, please buy any of the books below that interest you by clicking on the links here, rather than taking an alternate route to Amazon.com.

Although I don't get a cut from them, I do highly recommend the Advanced Book Exchange if you want to find books- listed below or otherwise- that are out-of-print.]

The first book I saw that was written by a computer was The Policeman's Beard Is Half-Constructed, which contains JanusNode-like computer-generated prose by Racter, a text-generator programmed by Wilt Chamberlain and Thomas Etter. The book was published in 1984 by Warner Books, Inc.: ISBN 0-446-38051-2. It is now out-of-print, I gather. However, there is a WWW site devoted to it, which rather sadly claims that most of its output was more-or-less faked, using extremely tight templates which left only a few words to vary.

The only serious treatment of computerized text generation with which I am familiar is Charles Hartman's Virtual Muse: Experiments In Computer Poetry, in which Hartman (a professional poet) describes his on-going experiments with a wide variety of computerized text-manipulation tools he has written (some of which are available here). The book is well worth reading. It contains examples of published computer-assisted poetry, as well as lots of ideas for new ways of using a computer to generate and morph text (which will all eventually be incorporated into future JanusNodes!). Hartman's book was published in 1996 by Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0-8195-2239-2.

A new book on computerized text generation has been recently released: Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of Brutus, a Storytelling Machine, by Selmer Bringsjord and David Ferrucci. Their main interest is in managing textual coherence in computer generated text using logical programming. Their book is mainly a spirited defense and analysis of this approach, written in a technical manner which will make it of limited interest to anyone not working in the cognitive science field (or anyone within the field who missed Logic 101). Their analysis of the concept of 'betrayal' in logical terms is fascinating as a case study of the complexity of even the simplest element of narrative coherence, and makes clear why there is little hope that a computer will generate a long, coherent, interesting narrative any time in the forseeable future.

I am a big fan of the intricate and intelligent novels of Richard Powers. His 1996 novel Galatea 2.2 is about an automatic text-production program that becomes conscious.

I do not believe that Ludwig Wittgenstein would approve of JanusNodes, but spending a few years trying to understand his Philosophical Investigations helped me to develop a deeper appreciation for Janus. If you want to take the circuitous road to Janus that leads through Wittgenstein, be sure to read lots of secondary sources too, because no one is going to agree with what you think he is saying (and that's only half the point).

My favourite book about the relationship between Wittgenstein's work and the poetics of everyday life (which is of course what Janus is all about) is Jan Zwicky's insightful and totally original Lyric Philosophy. Most professional philosophers will hate it, but the ones who don't will be the ones worth inviting over for dinner, anyway.

For a neo-Wittgensteinian take on semantics with a post-Beat twist, check out John Brockman's By The Late John Brockman, which he published back in his first incarnation (before he became John Brockman) in 1969. It used to be damned hard to find back in the 20th century, but now you can find a copy a week on the WWW. I have found several copies to give away as presents here. Anyway, the entire text is now on-line here.

My friend Jordan Peterson has recently published a book called Maps Of Meaning: The Architecture Of Belief, which explores in some depth the question of where the boundaries of the meaningful might lie. This is a dense and heavy book, not for the faint of intellectual heart, but highly recommended for you, since you labour under no such limitations.

If you want to see what the unfortunate people did to have this kind of Big Fun before they had technology which could have it for them, read Alastair Brotchie's A Book Of Surrealist Games, or Willard Bohn's anthology of Dadaist poetry (some of which makes a JanusNode's typical output seem boringly comprehensible), The Dada Market, or anything by the man with whom I happily share my birthday, Samuel Beckett.  2http://us.yimg.com/i/my/top7.gif+x$8wu$8y'8#h6http://us.yimg.com/i/my/top7.gif+x$8wu$8http://a372.g.akamaitech.net/7/372/27/y'8#h6http://us.yimg.com/i/my/top7.gif+x$8wu$8http://a372.gy'L 2qeZ2PMwp wl