Mark V. Shaney is a synthetic<!-- real, as in, not a hoax, and as opposed to fake --> Usenet user whose postings in the net.singles newsgroups were generated by Markov chain techniques, based on text from other postings. The username is a play on the words "Markov chain". Many readers were fooled into thinking that the quirky, sometimes uncannily topical posts were written by a real person.

The system was designed by Rob Pike with coding by Bruce Ellis. Don P. Mitchell wrote the Markov chain code, initially demonstrating it to Pike and Ellis using the Tao Te Ching as a basis. They chose to apply it to the net.singles <code>netnews</code> group.

The program is fairly simple. It ingests the sample text (the Tao Te Ching, or the posts of a Usenet group) and creates a massive list of every sequence of three successive words (triplet) which occurs in the text. It then chooses two words at random, and looks for a word which follows those two in one of the triplets in its massive list. If there is more than one, it picks at random (identical triplets count separately, so a sequence which occurs twice is twice as likely to be picked as one which only occurs once). It then adds that word to the generated text.

Examples

A classic example, from 1984, originally sent as a mail message, later posted to net.singles (see also sour grapes)

History

In The Usenet Handbook Mark Harrison writes that after September 1981, students joined Usenet en masse, "creating the USENET we know today: endless dumb questions, endless idiots posing as savants, and (of course) endless victims for practical jokes." In December, Rob Pike created the <code>netnews</code> group net.suicide as prank, "a forum for bad jokes". Some users thought it was a legitimate forum, some discussed "riding motorcycles without helmets". At first, most posters were "real people", but soon "characters" began posting. Pike created a "vicious" character named Bimmler. At its peak, net.suicide had ten frequent posters; nine were "known to be characters." But ultimately, Pike deleted the newsgroup because it was too much work to maintain; Bimmler messages were created "by hand". The "obvious alternative" was software,

Kernighan and Pike listed Mark V. Shaney in the acknowledgements in The Practice of Programming, was used for "humorous deconstructionist activities" in the 1980s.

Dewdney pointed out "perhaps Mark V. Shaney's magnum opus: a 20-page commentary on the deconstructionist philosophy of Jean Baudrillard" directed by Pike, with assistance from Henry S. Baird and Catherine Richards, to be distributed by email.

Dewdney wrote about the program's output, "The overall impression is not unlike what remains in the brain of an inattentive student after a late-night study session. Indeed, after reading the output of Mark V. Shaney, I find ordinary writing almost equally strange and incomprehensible!" He noted the reactions of newsgroup users, who have "shuddered at Mark V. Shaney's reflections, some with rage and others with laughter:"

See also

  • Turing test
  • Dissociated press
  • On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
  • Parody generator

References

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  • FAQ for the Plan 9 operating system by Mark V. Shaney
  • Unofficial biography
  • "Mark V. Shaney at Your Service" online version by Yisong Yue.
  • "Mark V. Shaney in Common Lisp" at Racine Systems.
  • Every Mark V. Shaney post at Google Groups Usenet archive.
  • "Sable Debutante's Journal", a Mark V. Shaney clone at LiveJournal
  • markovtxt.c, markov.c C source code at Bell Labs