The Sound of One Hand Clapping?

Although it may not relate explicitly to teaching, this is just too good to pass up. This preview sample of Clive Thompson's "I Chat, Therefore I Am..." from the May 2007 issue of Discover magazine consists primarily of transcribed snippets of conversation, giving us a kind of text-based eavesdropping. The dialogue, like so much of what we overhear on buses, elevators, and sidewalks every day, meanders here and there, touching briefly on a wide variety of topics. The subjects under consideration here, however, do seem to be a bit deeper than usual--the meaning of the universe, life and death, God and creation--as if the two speakers are either philosophy majors or major potheads.

What we have here, though, is not the script from some ill-conceived Cheech & Chong reboot, but something that is both far funnier and much more surreal--two computer programs talking to one another. The fine folks at Discover set up a play date of sorts between famous chatbots A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) and Jabberwacky, and these are the results of their interaction.