Randomness
From Maze
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(→III. The emergence of Randomness in Computing) | (→IV. The emergence of computational randomness in aesthetic design) | ||
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Knuth gamely admits that his own attempts to generate random numbers through software algorithms—using what he hoped to be a “’super random’ number generator”--failed, though it’s worth noting that he wanted his machine language program “to be so complicated that a man reading a listing of it without explanatory comments would not know what the program was doing” (Knuth 5). It does not take a leap of imagination to see in Knuth’s desire for obscure code an early version of the same kind of mystery residing in 10 PRINT. | Knuth gamely admits that his own attempts to generate random numbers through software algorithms—using what he hoped to be a “’super random’ number generator”--failed, though it’s worth noting that he wanted his machine language program “to be so complicated that a man reading a listing of it without explanatory comments would not know what the program was doing” (Knuth 5). It does not take a leap of imagination to see in Knuth’s desire for obscure code an early version of the same kind of mystery residing in 10 PRINT. | ||
| − | ===IV. The emergence of computational randomness in aesthetic design=== | + | ===IV. The Emergence of Computational Randomness in Aesthetic Design=== |
[An early example of this is a 1960 teleplay "written" by a computer at MIT, and then performed on CBS.] | [An early example of this is a 1960 teleplay "written" by a computer at MIT, and then performed on CBS.] | ||
