A Writer's Notebook, Day Nine-Hundred-And-Fifty

The idea of creating a poetry-bot that is based on my writing is not something that I really have no business attempting.  I mean, I am not a coder.  I took a bit of C back in high school and did so terribly that I did not continue.  In college, I took a course on AI, but it was mostly a lecture with very little hands on programming involved.  We did a small project in a language called Amzi, and I recall being rather fascinated, but I didn't have any idea how to proceed.  As an adult, I have looked at online tutorials and learned a bit, but I have never created any real programs or software before.  

At the same time, this project is one that feels very on brand, in some ways.  I've always had a fascination with AI, with computers in general, and in most specific, with teaching a machine language.  As well, I have been interested in the human side of that equation, and in language itself, of course, as it relates to human neurology and otherwise.  I played around with the Eliza program (and other chatbots as well) many times, and was always fascinated with the idea of coding language.  When I was a kid playing around in basic, I would often program conversational scripts where the computer asks questions and remembers the specific answer (even if it cannot really respond), as well as mad libs games, or other language based explorations.

In truth, all of those interests have a singular source for me, and that is my dyslexia.  I knew, even from a fairly young age, that my neurology was unusual, but I never knew what that meant, and the desire to understand my dyslexia led me to ask questions about the brain, and, in particular, about language.  As well, I became very adept with a computer when first introduced.  This was back in the eighties and the early nineties, and the machines were DOS based, so I could navigate with only a keyboard, through text commands.  It was far easier for me than any of the GUI options.  Because I was dyslexic, the computer was a necessary tool, and one that freed me from the physical limitations that kept me from writing without distress.  For me, the various aspects of this are all interests I have had my whole life, and, even more, are all connected, for me, to my dyslexia.

In some ways, that seems quite appropriate, as the nature of this project is not only to design some kind of basic code to spit out random poems, but to try and see what I can create, using my own work and cobbling together the code.  I don't know that I will be able to do what I would like, of course, but I know I can try, and I am already finding it is teaching me a great deal, and I am excited to see what I can achieve.

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