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-- Allegedly written by Racter, from The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed

Racter was an artificial intelligence computer program that generated English language prose at random. The name of the program is short for raconteur. Its existence was revealed to the world in 1984. The great sophistication claimed for the program was, however, a hoax, as could be seen by investigation of the template system of text generation. Hondas intelligent humanoid robot AI redirects here. ... The terms computer program, software program, applications program, system software, or just program are used to refer to either an executable program by both lay people and computer programmers or the collection of source code from which an executable program is created (eg, compiled). ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Prose blah blah blahProse generally lacks the formal structure of meter or rhyme that is often found in poetry. ... In ordinary language, the word random is used to express apparent lack of purpose or cause. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. ...

Racter was written by William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter. The existence of the program was revealed in a book called The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed (ISBN 0446380512), which was allegedly composed entirely by the program. According to Chamberlain's introduction to the book, the program apparently ran on a CP/M machine; it was written in "compiled BASIC on a Z80 micro with 64K of RAM." This version, the program that allegedly wrote the book, was not released to the general public. CP/M (Command Processor for Microcomputers) was an operating system for Intel 8080/85 and Zilog Z80 based microcomputers. ... BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ... Zilog Z80 microprocessor. ... The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular microcomputers of its era, and is the best selling home computer of all time. ... A four-megabyte RAM hiyaacard for the VAX 8600 computer (circa 1986). ...

However, in 1984 Mindscape, Inc. released an interactive version of Racter for DOS and Apple II computers. The published Racter was a chatterbot. The BASIC program that was released by Mindscape was far less sophisticated than anything that could have written the fairly sophisticated prose of The Policeman's Beard. The commercial version of Racter was essentially a computerized version of Mad Libs, the game in which you fill in the blanks in advance and then plug them into a text template to produce a surrealistic tale. The commercial program attempted to parse text inputs, identifying significant nouns and verbs, which it would then regurgitate, mixed with random inputs, to create "conversations." The outputs were occasionally amusing, but would never pass the Turing test. 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... ‹ The template below has been proposed for deletion. ... The Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the 1980s. ... A chatterbot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods. ... Mad Libs is the name of a word game that uses word substitutions for humorous effect. ... Look up Template in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Kay Sage. ... A noun, or noun substantive, is a part of speech (a word or phrase) which can co-occur with (in)definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ... The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machines capability to perform human-like conversation. ...

By contrast, the text in The Policeman's Beard, if generated by the Racter program at all, would have been the product of Chamberlain's own specialized templates, none of which were included in the commercial release of the program. Unfortunately, the text in The Policeman's Beard seems instead to have been the work of Chamberlain's editing or own imagination.

Racter? Reptar? Could it be that they are indeed the same monster, just waiting for the human race to be caught off guard and destroy the earth as we know it? Or could we elaborate with the monsters and turn earth into a galaxy.

External links

• Racter info page at MobyGames
• The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed selections
• Getting a Computer to Write About Itself by Bill Chamberlain
• Racter FAQ from August 1993 issue of The Journal of Computer Game Design