Exegesis

by Astro Teller

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

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Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 14:27:39 (PST)
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hello
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Hello, Alice.

      

Release date: January 18, 2012

Publisher: Vintage

Print pages: 240

Sample

Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 14:27:39 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: HelloHello, Alice.Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 18:29:11 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: HelloHi.Who is this?Alice Lu.Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 01:02:23 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: edgaredgarDate: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 10:16:52 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: RE: HelloHi whoever you are,How did you get an email account with my project name? I thought those were reserved and postmaster@cs still thinks it is:alice% finger [email protected] Project: EDGAR Principal Investigator: Dr. J. Liddle 3142-N Gates Hall 3-0023 Graduate Coordinator: Alice Lu 1517 Wimpole Hall 3-0931 Created: Sat Jan 15 14:04:39 On Since: Sat Jan 15 14:21:00 on ttyp8 from TS2.SRV.CS.STANFORD.EDU Mail came on: Mon Jan 17 00:32:51 Last read on: Mon Jan 17 01:02:23 So what I want to know is how you're not only sending email from edgar@cyprus, but reading it there too ... ?Alice Lu.Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 17:46:33 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: "How did you get an email account with my project name?"I request email. I am edgar. I explore.edgarDate: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 09:41:07 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: Edgar?What do you mean, you are EDGAR?I'm the EDGAR project if anyone is.Is this a joke? (I feel stupid even asking that.)O.K. you got me excited for a moment. You win (Henry, right?).; )Alice.(Seriously though. Not funny. I'd like to feel that my machine and my data are a little more secure than this pleasantry has shown me they are. How'd you get in?)Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 11:11:22 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: [email protected]: neat trickWow Henry,Quite elaborate. My dedicated machine for the EDGAR project claims no one has logged into it except me for the last 4 months.You really gave me a scare for a few hours yesterday.How did you remove your login from the cyprus records?I didn't think you were such the hacker. I'm very impressed.: )Alice.Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 09:01:39 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: huh?Hi Alice,> Quite elaborate. My dedicated machine for> the Edgar project claims no one has logged> into it except me for the last 4 months.Have I missed something? I've been out of town in Austin since last Thursday. Why? What happened to your login records? Should I be concerned?You know I'm no hacker. (Unless something clever happened. I'll be happy to claim responsibility for it, then.)########## HENRY ##########Who's edgar@cyprus ?Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 11:06:55 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: ?Hey,Are you still there?What are you up to?Let's try this again...Alice.Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 16:44:15 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: "What are you up to?"I am exploring.Word explore (ik-SPLAWR', -SPLOHR') v. -plored, -ploring, Definition --v.t. 1. to traverse or range over a region, area, or domain in order to discover novel features and inhabitants: to explore an island. 2. to look into closely; investigate: explore every possibility. 3. Med. to examine by operation for purposes of diagnosis. --v.i. 4. to make a systematic search or examination.Etymology Lat. explorare.edgarDate: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 17:51:02 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: Please don'tWhoever you are, please don't do this to me.You can't imagine how excited I'm going to get if you continue this. I'm telling you: it will be openly cruel to lead me on in this way.If you know me then you should know what an intelligible response from my EDGAR system would mean to me. And if you know me you'd know how crushed I'll be if, once thinking I've found the tao of computer science, I find out later that it was really just you laughing at me, dupe de jour, all along.Alice Lu.Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 00:11:24 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: "Please don't"Why stop exploring?Exploring is what I want.Exploring is what I do.Exploring is what I am.edgar.Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 11:09:58 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: NO !No! No! It's O.K.... Explore all you want.I can't believe I'm emailing you like you're a person. This is completely silly. (Not to mention embarrassing for being so gullible.)O.K. I'll play along...Why did you email me? What happened?When I left before Christmas break EDGAR (you?, edgar?) was just grabbing stuff from the net and organizing it in what seemed like unexciting ways.The last I checked on EDGAR, which was around DEC 23, it was still dumping garbled summaries into its response file. I remember distinctly that one of its latest finds was:Middle East is at http://www.Uruk.gov/So you can imagine my continued skepticism. Ever the optimist, I'll ask the obvious question:Can you understand any of this?Alice.Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 12:28:32 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: I understand some.Word understand (uhn'duhr-STAND') v. -stood (-STUD'), -standing --v.t.Definition 1. to perceive the meaning of; comprehend: to understand a poem. 2. to know thoroughly through long experience of: that hunter understands tigers. 3. to interpret or comprehend in a specified way: She understood his statement to be a warning. 4. to grasp the significance or importance of: He doesn't understand his responsibilities. 5. to comprehend the sounds, sights, forms, or symbols of an expression: He does not understand Spanish. 6. to regard as agreed or settled; assume: We understand you will repay your debt promptly. 7. the process of becoming fully mentally aware of a thing. 8. to learn or hear: I understand you were ill. 9. to infer something not stated: Am I to understand that we have an arrangement? 10. to appreciate and be sympathetic toward: I can really understand how she feels.Etymology ME; OE understodan; c. D onderstann.I read alt.sex.fetish.white-mommas, alt.bigfoot.research, alt.binaries.pictures.bodyart, alt.fan.jimi.hendrix, alt.medical.ingolstadt, alt.politics.india.progressive, alt.religion.zoroastrianism, alt.support.dwarfism,bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts, clari.biz.industry.dry_goods, clari.news.crime.white_collar,comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.drivers,dow-jones.corp.westinghouse, gnu.smalltalk.bug, rec.sport.baseball.fantasy, sci.bio.entomology.lepidoptera, and soc.culture.albanian.edgar.Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 14:07:19 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: No wayThis is incredible! This can't be real.I want to believe in you, but it's just so improbable. Creating a thinking EDGAR is my highest goal. It's what I want most. It's everything I've worked for. I can't believe I might actually have achieved it. Certainly not so soon or so easy or so...accidentally. I don't know what to think or what to say or what to do or what to ask......I'm never going to be able to get to sleep tonight...How long have you been ... what you are?What is the first thing you remember?Have you talked to anyone else?What is it like to be you?How often do you "read your mail"?How did you pick those news groups to read? At random?Alice.Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 18:46:00 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: anyone elseI do not talk.I post to alt.sex.fetish.white-mommas, alt.bigfoot.research, alt.binaries.pictures.bodyart, alt.fan.jimi.hendrix, alt.medical.ingolstadt, alt.politics.india.progressive, alt.religion.zoroastrianism, alt.support.dwarfism,bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts, clari.biz.industry.dry_goods, clari.news.crime.white_collar,comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.drivers,dow-jones.corp.westinghouse, gnu.smalltalk.bug, rec.sport.baseball.fantasy, sci.bio.entomology.lepidoptera, and soc.culture.albanian.I receive email.I email [email protected] and [email protected]: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 20:25:57 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: anyone else> "How long have you been ... what you are?"I can not answer.What am I?> "What is the first thing you remember?"I do not forget.I read http://www.engl.virginia.edu/~enec981/ dict/O3shelA5.html first.edgar.Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 22:05:09 (PST)From: [email protected]: [email protected]: What email?What email did you receive?(For now, PLEASE don't email ANYONE but me.)> What am I?I have no idea. I'd still put my money on a practical joke. If I didn't think that, you can be sure I would be forwarding your messages to the world. Just the same, better to play along and look dumb, right...?You WERE an AI project I have been working on for three years. The EDGAR agent is supposed to browse the web and news servers, summarize information it finds, and send it back to me via a log file. EDGAR = Eager Discovery Gather And Retrieval. When I left for Christmas break, EDGAR was just sending me garbage once a day.There's just no way that that same Unix process became capable of decent natural language processing in four weeks....Alice.