authorship without agency?: responding to computer-generated texts

Authorship Without Agency?

Responding toComputer-Generated Texts

Leah HenricksonLoughborough University

Who I Am• BA: University of Toronto

‒ Book & Media Studies• Directed Research Project:

Qui bene presunt: A Research Catalogue

• MA: Institute of English Studies,School of Advanced Study, University of London‒ History of the Book• Dissertation:

Feedforward: An Analysis of Inventory Books' Visualities Using Scholarship aboutMedieval Manuscripts

Computers are writing books.Why should we care?

Racter [William Chamberlain and Tom Etter], The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed (1984)

Nora Reed, www.twitter.com/christianmom18 (now suspended)

Arria NLG (Market Cap: 16.70M USD)

Darius Kazemi, Teens Wander Around a House [Version 1] (2013)

Algorithmic authorship breaks the hermeneutic code.

How does algorithmic authorship challenge traditional understandings of authorship?

What are the social and literaryimplications of these

challenges?

Theory and Methodology

• Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Elizabeth Eisenstein‒ Media scholars writing about periods of transition

• D. F. McKenzie, Robert Darnton, Thomas Adamsand Nicolas Barker‒ Book historians, sociologists of texts

• Analysis of primary and secondary material• Patent/stock analysis• Interviews• Empirical reader-response study

What’s Been Done• Definitions of key terms

‒ Program, algorithm, bot‒ Authorship, readership (historical)

• Historical overview: The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed• Recognition of key discussion points

‒ Creativity, processes of creation‒ Individual vs. collective reading experiences

• Interdisciplinary conversation/collaboration‒ Computer Science‒ Centre for Information Management‒ Social Sciences

What Needs Doing

• Reduction of scope• Interviews with computer-generated text

producers/programmers‒ Ethical clearance pending

• Development and execution of reader-response study

• Continued collaboration

Computers are writing books.Why should we care?

l.r.henrickson@lboro.ac.ukTwitter: @leahhenrickson

1 February 2017