Will monkeys really type Shakespeare if given enough time?

via the BBC...

The study: A single computer was placed in a monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo to monitor the literary output of six primates.

Who and when: Students at University of Plymouth, 2003, paid for from a £2,000 Arts Council grant

The aim: To test the "infinite monkey theory", which states that if a monkey hits keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time, it will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

What was learnt: The theory is flawed. After one month - admittedly not an "infinite" amount of time - the monkeys only produced five pages of work, consisting largely of the letter 'S'. The lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, partially destroyed the machine, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it without regard.

I would agree, monkeys are idiots- they are not random generators. I could say a good deal more about how silly this experiment is, but i'll spare my spar becuase it inspired a good laughter deep in my belly. The idea of monkeys tossed in a room, tapping away to infinity is certianly a concept favored by the old guard in science fiction writing, since dubbed the 'Infinite Monkey Theorum' and has been explored quite thoroughly.

Borges writes of the 'Library of Babel', which depicts a library that contains books consisting of every single possible permutation of characters. The narrator notes that every great work of literature is contained in the library; but these are outnumbered by the flawed works (which are themselves vastly outnumbered by works of pure gibberish). *Quine's Reducito, an interesting commentary on the matter

Asimov scribed a short story in which aliens observing earth remark on our relative slowness of advancement - it took 600,000 generations of monkeys to produce a Shakespeare.

Bradbury, in satire of his predecseors, wrote a short story about monkeys in a room that start immediately writing all of the great works of man, with correct margin sets, paragraphs, and punctuation.

And Colbert, in satire of all, said one million monkeys typing for eternity would produce Shakespeare, ten thousand (drinking) monkeys typing for ten thousand years would produce Hemmingway, and ten monkeys typing for three days would produce a work of Dan Brown.

These days, everyone has something to say on it, some joke to make.... A true anaylsis of monkey authoring plausibility here.

Though one must ask-- is the answer to the question of whether a bunch of monkeys would ultimately write the works of Shakespeare-- "One of them already did"?. Or maybe we should forget the typwriter and just throw a bunch of Shakespeares in a room with a computer, and see how long its takes for them to turn it on.