To test the infinite monkey theorem?

Say we redesigned a typewriter. Say none of the keys are marked, and they're in a totally random order... maybe the keyboard is even circular, and numbers and letters are interspersed. There is absolutely no way to tell what letter, number, or punctuation mark (not to mention enter, shift, etc) is which. Now put one of these unmarked, unidentifiable keyboards in a kindergarten classroom, and let them type all they like. Imagine one in every classroom in America! Pretty soon you'd start to get an awful lot of key combinations, right? On your way to...... THE INFINITE MONKEY THEOREM.

The idea is that the monkeys don't know what keys they're pressing, and eventually they'll type every existent key combination, thus producing all literature ever. So if these kindergartners have no idea which keys are which (and certainly couldn't type on a normal typewriter yet, either), it's the same idea. They're typing away, just having fun but unknowingly quoting Marx's first intimations of socialist living in his early writing, or Fagles' recent brilliant translation of Homer's Odyssey.

Can you just picture this? Typewriters across America.... across Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa? A WORLDWIDE EXPERIMENT...... is typing blindly really random enough to produce Two Gentlemen of Verona? Macbeth? King Richard III? The Spanish translation?

I really need to get over this.

posted by Holly @ 9:50 PM