byrd@husc7.HARVARD.EDU (John "The Squid" Byrd) (01/18/90)
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Computer Folklore: An Introduction and Survey
John Byrd
Oral Literature
TF: Janet Campbell
90 Jan 7
This is the Information Age. We live in a Brave New World
of computer-controlled bookkeeping, war-making (or peace-keeping),
weather predicting, junk-mailing, dating. A computer on my wrist
ticks off the seconds of the day while I stare into a computer
monitor, attempting to write a paper so my grade can be tabulated
and entered onto a computerized form and mailed to my home via a
computerized cross-reference. Computers are omnipresent and
insidious; one can understand E.E. Cummings's disheartened
soliloquy: "Progress is a comfortable disease ..."
But let's face it: computers did not build themselves.
They are ours; we made them. As a computer scientist and a human
being, I think of the huge number of electronic devices we've
made--the product of our logic and intellects--and wonder if there
aren't tiny electronic souls embodied in them. They deduce; they
derive; they decide. See how they run.1 Are computers our
inventions, or our mind-children?
Regardless, and for better or worse, one of the prime uses
of the computer is to communicate. Sprint, a long-distance
telephone company, brags about its fiber-optic digital (read that
computerized) network of phone lines. When I call home on
Sprint's network, a female computer-digitized voice tells me:
"Please enter your phonecard number now." An automatic telling
machine accepts my white bankcard and calls my West Virginia
bank's computer via a network, informing my bank that I withdrew
3
twenty dollars. Moreover, I plan to submit this paper to
interested people all over the world via a computer network.
The point is that a computers can facilitate communication
between machines and machines, between people and machines, and
between people and people; however, in this paper I will try to
examine the ways people utilize computers to communicate. I hope
to show, with examples and argument, that computer-communicated
information is in some instances be valid as folklore and
therefore be worth taxonomy and study as such.
Before I begin my argument, I should define some computer
terms that will be used throughout this paper, as I hope to write
from a folklorist's point of view rather than a computer
scientist's.
"Unlike supermarket bulletin boards, the electronic version
joins total strangers in distant cities."2 A computerized
bulletin board system, or BBS, allows a phone caller to use his
personal computer to "post" and "read" electronic messages,
articles, and programs to any of the persons who regularly call
the BBS. The caller's computer and the BBS communicate over the
phone lines with a fast series of high-pitched bleeps and whines.
Many businesses and electronic hobbyists operate their own BBSs;
all that is required is a personal computer, an appropriate BBS
program to run on it, and a device to let the computer answer the
phone called a modem. Since the cost of maintaining phone lines
by a BBS owner can be prohibiting, BBSs usually have only one
phone line from the outside world. Many BBSs are topical; that
is, messages can be required to be of a scientific, poetic,
4
insulting, or even romantic nature.
The next step up in the hierarchy of computer-controlled
communication is the computer network. These are large,
expensive, privately-owned systems of massive computers connected
twenty-four hours a day by modems. A typical computer network,
geographically mapped out, looks like a bizarre and haphazard web
of phone lines with computers at the points of connection. It is
possible to see how, with proper routing instructions, a network
can deliver information to distant locations quickly. There are
networks connecting universities (Internet, Usenet, Bitnet);
businesses (TRW); and hobbyists and laypersons (Quantum Link,
PeopleLink, CompuServe). Stuart Bennett wrote about the
difference between BBSs and network communication: "On BBSs there
may be hours or days between message and reply, so the emphasis is
on careful expression, not snappy one-liners; some romantics
compose elegant letters, others write poetry. But with online
dialogue, a lag of only a few seconds separates question and
response."3
Bennet is referring to what is now commonly called computer
CB, or citizen's band. The term is meaningless in the context; it
is a holdover from the personal radio transmitter craze of the
197O's. With a personal computer and a modem it is possible to
hook up with a computer network and engage in typed dialogues with
people in Savannah, San Francisco, and Poughkeepsie
simultaneously. On CompuServe, the CB program runs constantly; on
the busiest "channels" of communication there is a happy, random,
constant babble of people typing through their computers at one
5
another. Quantum Link and PeopleLink have similar
group-discussion CB-type programs.
It is clear, from Alan Dundes's definition of the term,
that users of a computer network or BBS constitute a "folk." The
term, says Dundes, "can refer to any group of people whatsoever
who share at least one common factor."4 Dundes further
strengthens this hypothesis thus: "A member of the group may not
know all other members, but he will probably the common core of
traditions belonging to the group, traditions which help the group
have a sense of group identity."5 Patricia Phelps, who goes by
the name "LooLoo" on CompuServe's CB, says of the network: "Many
of us who might not have given each other the time of day had we
met first in person have become genuine good friends ... We have
communicated mind-to-mind and found that we like what we have
learned about one another."
Over the computerized pathways, people communicate, in
pairs and in groups. From these networks and from my friends I
have collected samples of hundreds of unattributed, "public
domain" computer articles, games, pictures, songs, "utilities"
(computer-housekeeping programs), jokes, and other assorted
esoteric computer data. I submit that much of this information is
folklore--as colorful, indefinite, quirkish and visceral as any
other form of lore.
A text file is what computer scientists call any text which
is stored in a computer-processable format. Stories and jokes can
be text files. Messages are text files. This paper is a text
file because the word processor I am using to write it stores my
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document on a magnetic disk for later retrieval. I have spent
much of the past three months collecting text files from a
computer network called Internet which connects many major
colleges and universities around the world, and I now have several
dozen unattributed articles, jokes, and stories, and series of
messages. I distributed some of the more interesting and humorous
files I've discovered, via electronic and paperless "mail" over
the networks, only to find that some of my friends "have seen it
[the file] before." Moreover, I've found examples of copying and
referencing, verbatim and otherwise, in these text files. I'll
give an example now to demonstrate my meaning, but the bulk of my
collected data will come later.
Here are several excerpts from a thread of messages on
Internet, each with its author's Internet computer mailbox name,
along with the writer's real name if I could trace the mailbox
name to a real name. A "thread" is a sequence of messages that
are designated as being related to one another. The excerpts were
taken from messages in chronological order.
From bannonb@fai.UUCP:
"Q. What's the difference between a chorus
line of girls and a magician?
"A. A magician has a cunning array of
stunts."
From aindiana@osiris.cso.uiuc.edu:
"Q. What's the difference between the
counerfeit dollar and the skinny woman?
"A. One is a phony buck."
7
From lowj?ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (John
Alan "Travis" Low):
"Q. What's the difference between a clever
midget and a venereal disease?"
"A. One is a cunning runt."
From ee5391@hydra.unm.edu (Duke McMullan):
"Q: What's the difference between a jewel
thief and a peeping tom?
"A: A jewel thief snatches watches...."
From chrisc@astroatc.UUCP (Chris Czerwinski):
"Q. What's the difference between a queer and
a refrigerator?
"A. A refrigerator doesn't fart when you pull
the meat out."
From 880126b@aucs.uucp (Chris Butler):
"One of my favorite spooners [sic] is when
Neil Armstrong said:
"'This is one small step for man, one giant
step [sic] for mankind'
"He didn't make a spoonerism, he spake a
moonerism."
From jswanson@reed.UUCP:
"I heard that the whole Spoonerism [sic] went
as follows:
"'You hissed all of my mystery lectures. You
have tasted the whole worm. You must leave by
the first town drain.'
"He was reprimanding a student."
From dkrause@orion.oac.uci.edu (Doug Krause):
"[A] few months ago I was watching a movie
with a friend, had a couple too many beers and
said that maybe I ought 'to have my pomach
stumped.'"
8
From emoffatt@cognos.UUCP (Eric Moffatt):
"Q. What's the difference between a pickpocket
and a peeping-tom ?
A. A pickpocket snatches watches.
Q. What's the difference between 69 and a
hit-and-run accident?
A. At least in 69 you get to see the c*nt
coming." [elision his]
In-depth analysis is beyond the scope of this paper, but
here are some interesting points: the punchline pattern of
alternating the first phonemes is first broken by Czerwinski, in
which case the humor is (supposedly) supplied by the inclusion of
the taboo words "queer" and "fart," along with the meat/penis
reference; however, Czerwinski keeps the "what's the difference
..." formulaic beginning intact. The pattern is further degraded
by the elimination of the "Q." and "A." phrases in Butler's and J.
Swanson's samples. Krause offers us a real-life event plus the
nonsense phrase "pomach stumped," and his lead is not followed.
Moffatt quotes a variation of an already-published joke; in fact,
the latest reference in his article is to John Low and his
spoonerism. We see the pattern coalesce and degrade once again in
his second joke, relying on the mention of "69" and "c*nt" for
humor. Moffatt keeps the "what's the difference" formula in his
second joke. It is clear that in this particular instance of
threaded messages the simple formulaic beginning of "what's the
difference ...?" is more enduring than the more complex formula
for the spooneristic punchline, although a spoonerism was the
inspiration for the thread called "Spoonerisms."6
On computer networks, computer-specific programs are traded
9
as well as text files. These programs are as diverse as the
computers and users which run them, so I will concentrate on
programs of a definite genre: demonstration programs for the
Commodore 64 computer, or "demos" as the users of the computer
tend to call them.
The Commodore 64, manufactured by Commodore Business
Machines and first released in 1982, was and is an inexpensive
computer in a world of expensive computers; it costed $5OO when
released, and now it can be picked up at garage sales and via
mail-order for under $1OO. It has reasonable capabilities for
generating sound and pictures, and handles most standard
processing tasks. (However, I've had to split my word-processing
file, this paper, into four separate parts for lack of computer
memory.) There are 10,000,000 Commodore 64 computers extant in
the United States, according to a private communication from John
Hughes.
From 1983 to the computer shakeout in 1986, kids around the
world got Commodores, and learned to program them. Technical
manuals were photocopied, Commodore-supported "user groups"
formed, and programming tricks and tips were traded. The term
"copy party" was coined; it describes a day-long gathering where
computer programs and text files were communally traded. Computer
"hack" groups coalesced around the world, each group declaring its
own super-futuristic title: Triad, The Judges, Light Force, NASA,
National Pirates Network, Rezz, Worlds of Madness, SoedeSoft,
Dutch-USA Team, Digitized-Design Group, TOPPS Triangle, Enigma.
Each group tried to comprise the best programmers and computer
10
artists. As a result, there are many free demo programs designed
for the Commodore 64 on computer networks which are
un-copyrighted, self-advertising works of art.
The typical demo program, when run, shows a detailed
picture on the computer's TV screen and plays appropriate computer
music. Often there is a "scrolling text," or a message to other
hack groups, that slides slowly by on the screen, in the style of
a stock-exchange report. Makers of demos attempt to outdo each
other in terms of programming and artistic elegance; the best
programmers achieve glory for their hacking group as their work is
copied and distributed along networks. Although most demos
utilize the basic formula of song, picture, and scrolling text,
there is nonetheless considerable diversity in demos. A demo from
Light Force spins pictures of molecules to the beat of a rich
computerized score. A demo from Worlds of Madness shows the
inside of a movie theater; as the song progresses, a mini-movie
takes place in the theater. A demo from SoedeSoft shows a tape
player on the screen that the person watching the demo can control
via the computer's "joystick," allowing the onlooker to select a
particular "tape" to play.
There are interesting, if not enlightening, parallels
between the types of computer lore I've just discussed and
privately-owned, commercial programs versus standard folklore and
commercial literature. Although demos and text files are free and
uncopyrighted, commercial programs are copyrighted and generally
require some type of fee to be legally used. Demos and text
files, as often as not, are unattributed, and thus have uncertain
11
ancestries. Commercial programs always include either authors'
names or the name of the owning corporation. Similar dichotomies
may be noticed between common folklore and commercial literature.
Computers are verbatim. Given a text file to be sent to a
distant location, the computer will transmit that file word for
word, letter for letter, without so much as a comma or a space
misplaced. However, permanency and reliability of data is solely
a literate phenomenon. The idea that computers copy correctly is
detrimental to my thesis that computers can transmit folklore,
since folklore is by definition plastic and continuously changing
through time. Therefore, it is incumbent upon me to show why the
meticulous duplication that computers perform through networks
does not seriously affect my thesis.
Computers do not decide what kind of information to
transmit or to mail. Humans do. The ambiguous quality of data
explains why its verbatim transference does not diminish its value
as folklore. Computers do not understand the content of the mails
and messages they send over the networks: "What's the difference
between a chorus line of girls and a magician?" and "Fksj&y rwl
spghxsdewd eoifhse s djfjed ejfe id aleof cme s wpfjrovr#" are
both perfectly valid communications on CB. Only a human being can
recognize one message as a sentence and another as gibberish.7 A
computer, asked to transfer both phrases, will faithfully
reproduce both. A human would need to use literate means (e.g.
writing) to reproduce the gibberish because it has no meaning of
its own.
Each human can see a piece of information differently. I
12
think the chorus-line-and-magician joke is gross; I don't plan to
remember it and bring it up at dinnertime, nor do I plan to send
it to my friends on the network. You, however, may love it and
wish to send all your acquaintances a copy. Each mail sender and
receiver on a network makes a personal decision what to read and
what not to read; what to reproduce and what not to reproduce.
Personal sympathy and antipathy to data can help explain its
flourish or demise as folklore.
Furthermore, people often do not let computers furnish
perfect copies of what the people have received. A text file,
mailed electronically to a friend, will usually not be a perfect
copy of the original. Generally the new file will include a
heading telling the name of the computer mailing the file, the
date and time, and other information. Often the mailed file will
contain a message from the mailing person like this one, from one
my text files: "I can't believe this! Have you seen it all
before?" It is possible to edit this extraneous information out
of the text file, but the editing takes time and effort. Often
the text file is re-mailed, with the previous mailer's name and
computer embedded in the text file. In this way a text file,
transmitted from friends to friends, can expand, taking on new
names and addresses as it is mailed and re-mailed. There is an
interesting analogy between this process and of the
nineteenth-century zoological theory that "ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny," propounded by Ernst Haeckel and presented in Stephen
Gould's A Mismeasure of Man. "[A]n individual," writes Gould, "in
its own growth, passes through a series of stages representing
13
adult ancestral forms in their correct order ..."8 The comparison
between generations of organisms and generations of text files is
accurate, though not extremely useful.
One might argue, then, that information that traces its own
history of transmission is not folklore; after all, most folklore
studies examine stories and sayings whose original author or
authors are unknown. However, the bulk of text files I have
examined have neither the "original" author nor the history of
transmission intact anywhere in them. The ancestry of a text file
is unimportant to its bearers, and thus it is usually expunged, or
deleted. Geneaological information is often considered extraneous
to the "essence" of the text file.
Indeed, information and ideas are distilled from files and
programs as often as they are added. Commodore 64 hackers dissect
demos and remove interesting or original computer code for use in
their own demos; they call this process "ripping." Pictures and
songs appearing in one demo may appear, adulterated slightly or
not at all, in other demos. Generally ripping is considered to be
taboo in hacker circles. More acceptable is the ripping of
programming techniques, rather than of computer code itself; the
ability to create a demo, with scrolling text and a stationary
picture on the screen, is the hackers' equivalent of making the
team.
Another example of the common condensation of information
is the "followup" command avaliable on many computer networks,
like Internet and Usenet. A person who reads a message and wishes
to respond to the general network community regarding the article
14
will utilize the followup command. This enables the responder to
quote some or all of the message to which he is replying. Usenet
requests, during the followup process, that you "trim the quoted
article as much as possible" to save on network transmission
costs.
A spoken word contains more information than its written
counterpart. Inflection, facial expressions, and gesticulation
all contribute to the meaning of an oral event. Deborah Tannen
maps out a short oral interaction in "The Oral/Literate Continuum
in Discourse," in which she uses a fairly complex notation to
describe vocal intonation and rhythm.9 Ong noted in his book
Orality and Literacy that oral communication is more than just the
speaking of words:
It is impossible to speak a word orally
without any intonation. In a text punctuation
can signal tone minimally: a question mark or
comma, for example, generally calls for the
voice to be raised a bit. Literate tradition,
adopted and adapted by skilled critics, can
also supply some extratextual clues for
intonations, but not complete ones.10
The bearers of computer folklore have developed an
interesting way of communicating facial expressions and emotions
in the cold, textual environment of the computer network.
Apparently standard punctuation does not suffice to tell emotion
in networks. Thus, an informal system of drawing faces with
punctuation marks has spontaneously developed for use in CB and
text files. Tilt your head to the left and read the following
examples and comments, quoted from a text file (author again
15
unknown) from slambo@ucrmath:
:-) Your basic smilie. This smilie is used to
inflect a sarcastic or joking statement since
we can't hear voice inflection over Unix [a
computer operating system, sometimes used for
CB].
;-) Winky smilie. User just made a flirtatious
and/or sarcastic remark. More of a "don't hit
me for what I just said" smile.
:-( Frowning smilie. User did not like that last
statement or is upset or depressed about
something.
:-I Indifferent smilie. Better than a Frowning
smilie but not quite as good as a happy smilie
:-> User just made a really biting arcastic
remark. Worse than a :-).
>:-) User just made a really devilish remark.
>;-) Winky and devil combined. A very lewd remark
was just made.
:-P Sticking out tongue.
[] Hugs. [Arms, perhaps?]
Computer folklore is neither oral nor literate. It is not
transmitted vocally, and therefore not oral. It is interactive,
fast, fluid, and indefinite, and therefore not literate. This
non-literate, non-oral type of folklore may require that standard
folklore terms and ideas be adjusted to the networked "terrain,"
as it were. Hypotheses regarding the transmission of folklore
must take into account the inability to correlate geographical
distance to network distance. The time for a message to travel
from sender to receiver via a network is proportional to the
number of computers in the chain that handle the message, as well
as the speed of particulate transmission of those computers.
Information theory, a relatively new science of communication, may
be of use in developing hypotheses regarding computer folklore
transmission.
16
A computer virus is a tiny computer program that discreetly
attaches itself to other computer programs when they are run, thus
"infecting" them. By attaching themselves to other programs,
viruses spread quickly through collections of computer programs
and over networks. Some viruses only replicate, causing no ill
effects (Scores and INIT 29 viruses); some viruses replicate and
later "wake up" and delete important program information (Israeli
virus); some viruses cause a computer program to beep at odd times
or to otherwise act strangely (nVIR and AIDS viruses). The
popular media has implied that viruses "develop" through some sort
of bizarre electronic natural selection; actually, viruses are
designed and written by disgruntled programmers and hackers. In
some instances individual viruses can "mate" before reproducing
and thus create new viruses comprising qualities of both its
parents. I pose a fascinating question: viruses, which are bits
of information created by people, are spread and mutated by
computer users without their knowledge. Is information,
transmitted and changed without a person's conscious knowledge,
valid as folklore?
---
Researching this topic has been extremely taxing.
Apparently either no one has noticed this topic, or no one has
cared to write about it. I have in my room a large pile of books
which were singularly useless in developing my thoughts for this
paper. It seems that articles and books which describe the topic
of "Computers And Society" tend to present an ethical examination
17
of networks, rather than a folkloristic study. Books that are
about "Computers And Civilization" express the impact (usually
destructive and anti-socializing) of computers on society. An
interesting collection of studies, compiled by Sara Kiesler and
Lee Sproul, is prefaced thus:
Many people have strong feelings about
computers. For some, they symbolize progress,
productivity, and innovation. For others,
they symbolize isolation and depersonalization
of human relations. Often missing in
discussions about the arguments and effects of
computers are factual data.11
Even Theodore Roszak's book with the promising title, The
Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of
Thinking, covers only the field from a rather one-sided view of
cybernetics and the "politics of information" to an overemotional
argument against "the chimera of computer literacy:"
[The computer's] benefits supposedly reach to
intellectual values at the highest level,
nothing less than the radical transformation
of educational methods and goals ... Without
leaving their dorms, students will be able to
access the library card catalog; they will be
able to log on to a student bulletin board to
exchange advice, gossip, make dates ... When
enthusiasts come up with artificial uses like
these for the computer, they are really doing
nothing more than teaching another lesson in
technological dependence, a vice already
ingrained in our culture.12
This kind of material is fine reading when one is
developing a personal opinion regarding computers and computer
networks; however, future folkloristic students of this topic
should take note that books of subject types similar to "Computers
18
And People" or "Computers And Society" generally tend to make an
ethical, personal statement regarding man's interaction with
computers, and do not usually contain Kiesler's and Sproul's brand
of "factual data."
I will close this paper by presenting two collections of
computer folklore. One collection, which is of children's rhymes
of the type beginning with "Great green gobs of greasy grimy
gopher guts," is folklore which was spread actively outside of the
Internet network and collected through the network. The second
collection, that of the "cows" genre, is a collection of folklore
that is of a text file nature and thus could not have developed
outside of a computer network.
It is my hope that these items I have collected, along with
my arguments and ideas, serve to stimulate interest in the
academic community regarding the topic of computer folklore.
19
All these messages were taken from the newsgroup
"rec.humor" on Internet over a two-week period. Quotation marks,
spacing, and capitalization were copied closely.
1. From rg@uunet!unhd (Roger Gonzalez):
"Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
marinated monkey feet
chopped up baby parakeet
...?"
2. From schriste@uceng.UC.EDU (Steven V. Christensen):
"Girls are made of greasy grimy gopher guts
french fried eye-balls,
chopped up parakete,
marinated monkey meat,
Gee I'm glad I'm a Boy!! :-> "
3. From ee5391aa@hydra.unm.edu (Duke McMullan n5gax):
"Great green gobs of greasy, grimy, gopher guts,
Mutilated monkey meat,
Itty bitty birdie feet!
"Great green gobs of greasy, grimy, gopher guts,
And me without a spoon!"
4. From izen@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Steven H. Izen):
"Girls are made of greasy grimy gopher guts,
mutilated monkey meat,
little birdies dirty feet.
All these things are very very good to eat,
but we don't have spoons,
we have straws."
5. From mmg@creare.UUCP:
"Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meats
Little birdies bloody feets
One quart can of all-purpose porpoise pus
Swimming in a pink lemonade
"...and I forgot my spoooooon."
20
6. From max@lgc.lgc.com (Max Heffler @ Landmark Graphics):
"Gobs and gobs of greasy, grimy, gopher guts
mutilated monkey's meat
little birdy dirty feet
French-fried eyeballs swimming in a pool of blood
that's what we had for lunch, and for supper..."
7. From davidje@sco.COM (Le Chevalier Blanc):
"Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
Mutilated Monkey meat
Itty bitty birdy's feet
"Piles and piles of ************* pus (a line I don't remember)
And me without a spoon....."
8. From hankins@cs.swarthmore.edu (Jonathan Broadfield):
"great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts
mutilated monkey meat
chopped-up little feet
all washed down with [i come to this point and realise i don't
remember it all..]
" oops! i forgot my spoon
(i'll use a straw...:) "
9. From campbell@ug.cs.dal.ca (Scott Campbell):
"Green grimy gopher guts,
Mixed with monkey meat,
French fried eyes,
Swimming in a pool of blood.
Gee, I wish I had a straw!
1O. From bayliss@skat.usc.edu (Drew Bayliss):
"Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts,
Medicated monkey meat,
Little tiny baby feet,
French fried eyeballs floating in a pool of blood,
"That's what I had for lunch!
<Too bad I forgot my spoon>
(please can I have some more)"
21
11. From ioiaa08@discg1.UUCP (ann schrage):
"Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meat
Birdies little dirty feet
One full quart of all purpose porpoise pus
And I forgot my spoon
But I have a straw!!!"
12. From attcc.UUCP!hlw (Howard Wilson):
" The ONLY two parts I can remember are:
"Deep Fried Eyeballs dipped in kerosene,
what I eat is not very clean.
"Apparently a dinner song."
13. From attcc.UUCP!ksg:
"Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
mutilated monkey nuts...
"I can't think of anything else but that line-sorry"
22
NOTE PAGE
1 Quote from "Lady Madonna" and "I Am the Walrus," two songs by
John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
2 Gannes, Stuart, "New Medium for Messages," Discover, 84 May, pp.
80-82.
3 Bennet, Stuart, "The Data Game," The New Republic, 200:20-2, 13
Feb 89.
4 Dundes, Alan, "What Is Folklore?" from The Study of Folklore,
Prentice-Hall, Inc., c. 1965, p. 2.
5 Ibid.
6 The term "spoonerism" was coined after W.A. Spooner (1844-193O),
an English clergyman noted for this type of phonemic inversion.
(From The American Heritage Dictionary, publishing information
unavailable due to missing pages)
7 This is not true for some sentences. Computers can interpret
semantic and syntactic order, and check it against correct
examples of sentence semantics. The problem with this (and
artificial intelligence programmers are searching diligently for
tractable methods around this glitch) is that most English
parsing programs will blithely accept meaningless esoterica such
as "The water is on fire." Computers do not yet understand the
world around them in any but the most rudimentary senses.
8 Gould, Stephen Jay, The Mismeasure of Man, W.W. Norton & Co., c.
1981, p. 114.
9 Tannen, Deborah, "The Oral/Literate Continuum in Discourse,"
from Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and
Literacy, Ablex Publishing Corp., c. 1982, p. 10.
10 Ong, Walter J., Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the
Word, Methuen, Inc., c. 1982, p. 102.
11 Kiesler, Sara and Sproul, Lee, ed. Computing and Change on
Campus, Cambridge University Press, c. 1987. p. viii.
12 Roszak, Theodore, The Cult of Information: The Folklore of
Computers and the True Art of Thinking, Pantheon Books, c. 1986,
pp. 60-61.
----
If anyone is truly interested, mail me and I'll send a compressed version
of the cow file discussed in the article (it's over 200K).
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John Byrd !
byrd@husc7.harvard.edu ! "Uh, could you repeat the question?"
Q-Link: John Byrd ! - Sid Vicious
CompuServe: 74506,3612 !
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