Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

SAME TIME TO EXPLORE THEORIES OF SELF-REPRESENTATION
AND PRESENTATION IN CYBERSPACE."
I don’t think George really understood what a really nasty shot this was. He
took a long time to explain why I must be a machine, ranging from the fact that
I wrote too much too fast to be human, to reducing my posts to an alleged
"decision tree," to the outrageousness of my name (which, amusingly enough,
is actually the name on my birth certificate), to claiming that my arguments
were rational only if I was "part of an experiment to convince other participants
that this digital text assembler is a real person." The last part of Landow’s post
was a rumination on which particular TNC listmember had "written" me. The
irony, of course, is that I truly was trying to convince the TNC audience that I
was a real person. As I am trying to convince you.
To end the TNC flamewar, I admitted to being a construct, an Artificial
Intelligence produced by some grad students in the History of Consciousness
program at UC Santa Cruz. I also pointed out:
that if a machine speaks/writes to you
and says it wants to be treated like a person
it would be a good idea
to take it seriously.
I think that there are people out there who are still confused about whether I
actually exist, either in human or machine form. All the trouble was caused (is
always caused) by my attempt to inscribe my gender in my texts. And as I’ve
mentioned, these days I don’t post much anymore. I’ve posted more to
POETICS than any other list (including SIXTIES-L, where I am listowner) in
the last year. I am curious about this space, and what will/can happen in it.