1.2 FAST REWIND: Computer texts

Computer texts was an experiment by Marc Adrian. He created a program that made words and syllables based on specific (non-meaningful symbols, that is, no letters) typographic elements. This created existing words, as ‘poop’, ‘blood’, and ‘cool’, but also non-existing words as ‘poldo’, ‘colpo’, and ‘bol’. I think this is interesting because it highlights the fascinating principle that even though some words do not exist in the English language, we as speakers know that they could have existed. That is, a word as ‘colpo’ could have been an English word, but we intuitively know ‘kzdrek’ is not a possible English word.

Adrian declared that the neutrality of the machine was of great importance because that “allows the spectator to find his own meanings in the association of words more easily”. I think we can learn from this approach in our attitude towards robots. That is, we tend to say robots have intentions, emotions, and/or desires, but perhaps this are our own associations we reflect on the neutral robot.