SOFTWARE
Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines has become a handbook for those who believe computers will become sentient within a century. Kurzweil himself looks forward to the day when we low-fi-thinking mammals are transformed into all-knowing computer-human hybrids. But the author's not just yapping about his vision from a comfy futurist armchair - he's done something about it. A longtime pioneer in the development of artificial intelligence systems (including voice-recognition software, machines that read to the blind, and electronic keyboards that reproduce the sounds of acoustic instruments), Kurzweil has a track record of inventing things that mix revolutionary technology with cultural needs.
I recently tried one of Kurzweil's latest creations, Cybernetic Poet, a computer program for Windows. By analyzing verse written by, say, Shakespeare (or Dickinson or ... Ray Kurzweil!), the program creates a language to help you craft poetry in the style of the chosen author.
I downloaded the free "lite" version of Cybernetic Poet from the Web. (The deluxe version analyzes your own work so that you can write based on models of, well, your own poems.) Launching the program's Poet's Assistant brought up a window for composing poetry and a smaller pop-up window ready to offer rhymes, alliterations, next words, and lines based on the chosen Poet Profile.
At first I got a kick out of crafting lines juxtaposing my own sensibility with that of Virgil or Wordsworth. I'd write half a line, choose "Blake" from the profile list, and command the Assistant to finish the line. Sometimes the results seemed inspired, in a kooky, look-what-software-can-do kinda way. But the longer I collaborated with the ghost in the machine, the further away I felt from the reasons I write poetry.
I once asked a friend whose debut collection of poems had just been published if he was working on a second book of verse. "I'll be lucky if I write another poem," he replied. For scribes out there feeling the weight of writer's block, the software may be just the inspiration they need to face the blank page. For others more interested in language systems and intelligence engines, Cybernetic Poet offers hours of serendipitous linguistic mania and some truly hilarious suggestions. My favorite, a Kurzweil-based ending to my line "Loneliness is a laboratory": symphony of mud. I never would have thought of that. Maybe that's the point.
Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet: free download; Premium Edition: $29.95. Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies: +1 (781) 263 0000, www.kurzweilcyberart.com.
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