Friday, March 14, 2008

“After a year in therapy my psychiatrist said to me, "Maybe life isn't for everyone"” Larry Brown

Yesterday I was listening to NPR and they mentioned Weizenbaum the creator of one of my favorite applications. When I first got my own computer I loaded all sorts of applications that I could find experimenting and playing with everything. One of them was a lot older than I had ever known and that was Eliza. This program as I learned on NPR was an experiment into the world of AI (Artificial Intelligence). It looked kind of like the old style chat windows and you would type in your problems. It was set to answer back all kind of prompts. Its speech was right out of a psychologist chair. Lots of phrases like go on and tell me more. Of course at that time I would spend hours trying different combinations to see what else it had to say. It was a ton of very strange fun. You can still give it a try today. Also I recommend listening to the NPR piece. It fills you in on the history and is really interesting. So if you are feeling a bit down and want to explore some of those feelings give this one a whirl.


This post will be my last for a bit. I am going to be away for a couple of weeks but I shall post again as soon as I get back.

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