Post AcBdHKMUe2GcK07cVU by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
(DIR) More posts by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
(DIR) Post #AcBI2ZBl8eDQvQDmwS by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2023-11-26T00:06:32Z
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Claude Shannon explored a simpler version of the ideas that LLMs use, in his 1948 paper, "A mathemetical theory of information". The paper is a mix of arcane (to me) math and nice prose.He plays with known letter and word frequency and redundancy to create strings that appear to contain information.Starting here (page 4):2. THE DISCRETE SOURCE OF INFORMATIONor if you want a quicker look (page 6):3. THE SERIES OF APPROXIMATIONS TO ENGLISHhttps://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf
(DIR) Post #AcBJG2597o6cFs74k4 by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2023-11-26T00:20:11Z
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The final sentence in this paragraph:"To construct (3) for example, one opens a book at random and selects a letter at random on the page. Thisletter is recorded. The book is then opened to another page and one reads until this letter is encountered.The succeeding letter is then recorded. Turning to another page this second letter is searched for and thesucceeding letter recorded, etc. A similar process was used for (4), (5) and (6). It would be interesting iffurther approximations could be constructed, but the labor involved becomes enormous at the next stage."
(DIR) Post #AcBJjgdlPPu6RURfsW by scotth@fosstodon.org
2023-11-26T00:25:32Z
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@tomjennings Gysin/William S Burroughs' cutup method is an interesting variation on that idea, no? It brought us some great Bowie songs (Not sure if Bob Dylan ever admitted it or not, but I swear some of his stuff is from cutups.)
(DIR) Post #AcBKglB2BYPhb8Ax9M by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2023-11-26T00:36:12Z
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@scotth Right! It's an odd moment, when you decide to invoke randomness (sic)(usually:-) into a creative process. It has a touch of foolishness, a leap, and hope. Very Discordian.One of my very favorite books is Rand's 1955 A MILLION RANDOM DIGITS... I did my MFA thesis on it, mining uranium, and a 4000 year old spreadsheet, amongst other things. (I re-created the RAND hardware random number generator involving a "6D4 thyratron in a crossed magnetic field" as a lovely functional sculpture. https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Objects/GTNG/index.html)RAND's book is the precise opposite of a math table: the process used to read eg. logarithm tables is rigid and invariant, to ensure repeatability; the RAND intructions://"...open the book to an unselected page... blindly choose a 5-digit number; this number reduced modulo 2 determines the starting line; the two digits to the right... determine the starting column..."//The book is gauranteed to contain no information! Again totally discordian.Here's my book review, lol:https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/MillionRandomDigitsBook/
(DIR) Post #AcBMEYX1o3rABB8sTI by scotth@fosstodon.org
2023-11-26T00:53:32Z
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@tomjennings I enjoy that one. I've been following your art and Rambler wrenching adventures since the wps com days, but I forgot about that one until you posted just now. What is particularly interesting (to me) is that I had no idea about cutups the first time I read that, so I was just thinking "cool, weird electronic stuff". My memory was I first found your stuff searching for various Rambler how-to articles. I can also relate to "wanting to know" as building something from scratch.
(DIR) Post #AcBVmbysO7n0JHTvaS by jef@mastodon.social
2023-11-26T02:40:30Z
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@tomjennings I remember in the early days of the web I had a grudge against Scientology, I think it was, so I used a Markov chain generator to create random pages based on their corpus, seeded by a number in the URL, linking to other pages with random numbers. Was hoping to drown them out in search engines but Google was too smart for that.
(DIR) Post #AcBdHJEepgPApPRqee by scotth@fosstodon.org
2023-11-26T01:03:41Z
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@tomjennings Funny... I didn't have any idea about FidoNet until recently. It was always just your Rambler American 100inch wheelbase w/ the best looking front suspension of any Rambler and some Nixie Tube art. 17 years went by, and a year ago I dreamed about your Navarro engine: https://orng.org/#🍊🔸📝🔸💤🔸191So... even my unconscious mind has you and AMC related, I guess. Here is a question: Dreams are supposed to be aspects of ourselves. What aspect of myself is Tom Jennings?
(DIR) Post #AcBdHKMUe2GcK07cVU by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2023-11-26T04:04:30Z
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@scotthLol that's really odd! But funny. Yeah dreams are weird man. It is odd to be the subject of one!
(DIR) Post #AcBdZEhSQyZxyST2I4 by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2023-11-26T04:07:44Z
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@scotthHmmm I did get my first rambler possibly the same year I started working in OREs computer department... So they have been on parallel trajectories the whole time!
(DIR) Post #AcBe41dv1v2iSIUfJI by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2023-11-26T04:13:19Z
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@jefIt does seem true; I wonder why? 4chan, before it went bad, did some targeting of them....The first time I heard of scientology was when I had to work with an adherent, probably 1980ish. He was an insufferable argumentative ass who just would not stop talking about it. (I was 25 so no comment on myself.) Ahh the good old days of search engines, when pages just had reams of keywords at the bottom as "SEO"...