Editing Mark V. Shaney

{{Short description|System which created Usenet posts using Markov chains}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2013}}
'''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'' [[newsgroup]]s 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.<ref name="curious"/>

Then, in the same way, it picks a triplet that starts with the second and third words in the generated text, and that gives a fourth word. It adds the fourth word, then repeats with the third and fourth words, and so on. This algorithm is called a third-order Markov chain (because it uses sequences of three words).<ref name="curious">{{cite web |last1=Subramanian |first1=Devika |title=The curious case of Mark V. Shaney |url=https://www.cs.rice.edu/~devika/comp140/Shaney.pdf |work=Comp 140 course notes, Fall 2008| publisher=William Marsh Rice University |department=Computer Science |date=Fall 2008 |access-date=30 November 2024}}</ref>

==Examples==
A classic example, from 1984, originally sent as a mail message, later posted to net.singles<ref name="Party Politics"/> is reproduced here:

{{Cquote|>From mvs Fri Nov 16 17:11 EST 1984 remote from alice

It looks like [[Reagan]] is going to say? Ummm... Oh yes, I was looking for. I'm so glad I remembered it. Yeah, what I have wondered if I had committed a crime. Don't eat with your assessment of Reagon and [[Mondale]]. Up your nose with a guy from a firm that specifically researches the teen-age market. As a friend of mine would say, "It really doesn't matter"... It looks like Reagan is holding back the arms of the American eating public have changed dramatically, and it got pretty boring after about 300 games.

People, having a much larger number of varieties, and are very different from what one can find in [[Chinatown]]s across the country (things like [[pork bun]]s, steamed dumplings, etc.) They can be cheap, being sold for around 30 to 75 cents apiece (depending on size), are generally not greasy, can be adequately explained by stupidity. Singles have felt insecure since we came down from the Conservative world at large. But [[Chuqui]] is the way it happened and the prices are VERY reasonable.

Can anyone think of myself as a [[third sex]]. Yes, I am expected to have. People often get used to me knowing these things and then a cover is placed over all of them. Along the side of the $$ are spent by (or at least for ) the girls. You can't settle the issue. It seems I've forgotten what it is, but I don't. I know about violence against women, and I really doubt they will ever join together into a large number of jokes. It showed [[Adam]], just after being created. He has a [[modem]] and an [[autodial]] routine. He calls my number 1440 times a day. So I will conclude by saying that I can well understand that she might soon have the time, it makes sense, again, to get the gist of my argument, I was in that (though it's a [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] [[Administration of the United States|administration]]).

_-_-_-_-Mark}}

Other quotations from Mark's Usenet posts are:<ref name="Jillette"/>

*"I spent an interesting evening recently [[:Wiktionary:with a grain of salt|with a grain of salt]]." (Alternatively reported as "While at a conference a few weeks back, I spent an interesting evening with a grain of salt."<ref name="SoftPanorama"/><ref name="Change of"/>)
*"I hope that there are [[:Wiktionary:for sour apples|sour apples]] [[:Wiktionary:there's a rotten apple in every barrel|in every bushel]]."<ref name="Sour"/><ref name="bushel">{{cite news |last1=Nunberg |first1=Jeff |url=https://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/136017612/bad-apple-proverbs-theres-one-in-every-bunch |access-date=30 November 2024}}</ref> (see also [[:wiktionary:sour grapes|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,<ref name="Harrison"/><!-- whole above paragraph --> running on a Bell Labs computer<ref name="Jillette"/> created by Bruce Ellis, based on the Markov code by Don Mitchell, which became the online character Mark V. Shaney.<ref>Harrison, p. 219</ref><ref name="Dewdney"/><!--authorship--><ref>Dewdney and Pike both credit Ellis alone. Harrison and Jillette credit both Ellis and Pike.</ref>

[[Brian Kernighan|Kernighan]] and Pike listed Mark V. Shaney in the acknowledgements in ''[[The Practice of Programming]]'',<ref name="Practice"/> noting its roots in Mitchell's <code>markov</code>, which, adapted as <code>shaney</code>,<ref>Kernighan, Pike, p. 84</ref> was used for "humorous [[deconstruction]]ist activities" in the 1980s.<ref>Kernighan, Pike. p. 82</ref>

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.<ref name="Dewdney"/> The piece was based on Jean Baudrillard's "The Precession of Simulacra",<ref name="PikeEmail"/> published in ''[[Simulacra and Simulation]]'' (1981).

==Reception==
The program was discussed by [[A. K. Dewdney]] in the ''[[Scientific American]]'' "Computer Recreations" column in 1989,<ref name="Dewdney"/> by [[Penn Jillette]] in his ''[[PC Computing]]'' column in 1991,<ref name="Jillette"/> and in several books, including the ''Usenet Handbook'',<ref name="Harrison"/> ''Bots: the Origin of New Species'',<ref name="Leonard"/> ''Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.'',<ref name="Boese"/> and non-computer-related journals such as ''Texas Studies in Literature and Language''.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Bits of Information and Tender Feeling: Gertrude Stein and Computer-Generated Prose|first=Carolynn |last=Van Dyke|journal=Texas Studies in Literature and Language|volume=35|issue=2 Anxieties of Identity in American Writing |date=Summer 1993|pages=168–197}}</ref>

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:"<ref name="Dewdney"/> 

<blockquote>The opinions of the new ''net.singles'' correspondent drew mixed reviews. Serious users of the bulletin board's services sensed satire.  Outraged, they urged that someone "pull the plug" on Mark V. Shaney's monstrous rantings. Others inquired almost admiringly whether the program was a secret artificial intelligence project that was being tested in a human conversational environment.  A few may even have thought that Mark V. Shaney was a real person, a tortured schizophrenic desperately seeking a like-minded companion.<ref name="Dewdney"/> 
</blockquote>

Concluding, Dewdney wrote, "If the purpose of computer prose is to fool people into thinking that it was written by a sane person, Mark V. Shaney probably falls short."<ref name="Dewdney"/>

A 2012 article in ''[[The New York Observer|Observer]]'' compared Mark V. Shaney's "strangely beautiful" postings to the [[Horse_ebooks]] account on [[Twitter]] and music reviews at ''[[Pitchfork (magazine)|Pitchfork]]'', saying that "this mash-up of gibberish and human sentiment" is what "made Mark V. Shaney so endlessly fascinating".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Roy |first1=Jessica |title=Meet Mark V. Shaney, Usenet's Very Own @Horse_ebooks |url=https://observer.com/2012/07/mark-v-shaney-horse-ebooks-markov-chain-twitter-07022012/ |website=[[The New York Observer|Observer]] |access-date=2023-05-26 |date=2012-07-02}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Turing test]]
*[[Dissociated press]]
*''[[On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog]]''
*[[Parody generator]]

==References==
{{reflist|30em|refs=
<ref name="Dewdney">{{cite journal | last = Dewdney | first = A. K. | author-link = A. K. Dewdney | title=A potpourri of programmed prose and prosody; Computer Recreations; computer-generated commentary | journal = Scientific American | volume = 260 | issue=6 | pages = 122–125 |date=June 1989 | doi = 10.1038/scientificamerican0689-122}}</ref>

<ref name="Jillette">{{cite journal | last=Jillette | first=Penn | title=I Spent an Interesting Evening Recently with a Grain of Salt | journal=[[PC Computing]] | volume=4 | issue=7 | pages=282 | date=July 1991 |url=http://glenda.cat-v.org/friends/mark-v-shaney/grain-of-salt |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/19961119143254/http://www.sincity.com/penn-n-teller/pcc/shaney.html |archivedate=November 19, 1996 <!--unused link: [http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=author%3AJillette+intitle%3AI+Spent+an+Interesting+Evening+Recently+with+a+Grain+of+Salt&as_publication=PC-Computing&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&btnG=Search Scholar search]-->}}</ref>

<ref name="Party Politics">{{cite web|url=http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3112%40alice.UUCP  |title=Party Politics (follow-up)|author= Mark V. Shaney|date= November 16, 1984|work= net.singles |publisher= Google Groups Usenet archive}}</ref>

<ref name="SoftPanorama">{{cite web|url=http://www.softpanorama.org/Bulletin/Humor/Archive/humor065.txt |title=Object oriented programmers of all nations -- encapsulate - Softpanorama 1994, vol. 6, No. 6 |publisher=Softpanorama.org |date=May 11, 1994 |accessdate=October 20, 2012}}</ref>

<ref name="Change of">{{cite web |title= Change of topic?|work=net.singles| author=Mark V. Shaney 	|date=September 12, 1984 |url=http://groups.google.com/group/net.singles/msg/1c0397df200a160a |accessdate=October 20, 2012}}</ref>

<ref name="Sour">{{cite web |author=Mark V. Shaney |work=net.singles| date=October 26, 1984 |title=Advertising with bikini-bait|publisher=Google Groups Usenet archive|url=http://groups.google.com/group/net.singles/msg/2fc0e619f616d2f5 |accessdate=October 20, 2012}}</ref>

<ref name="Practice">{{cite book|title=The Practice of Programming |first1=Brian W. |last1=Kernighan |first2=Rob |last2=Pike|year=1999 |publisher=Addison-Wesley|page=XII |isbn=9780201615869 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=to6M9_dbjosC&pg=PR12 |accessdate=October 20, 2012}}</ref>

<ref name="Harrison">{{cite book|title=The Usenet Handbook: a User's Guide to Netnews |first=Mark |last=Harrison |publisher=O'Reilly & Associates |year=1991 |pages=216–220 |isbn=9781565921016 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uiLoVScRTiYC&q=mark+v.+shaney |accessdate=October 20, 2012   <!--GNU Open Document License by author--> }} [http://markharrison.net/usenet/usenet.pdf Alt URL]</ref>

<ref name="Leonard">{{cite book|title=Bots: the Origin of New Species |first= Andrew |last=Leonard |publisher=Hardwired |year=1997 |isbn=978-1888869057 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QIwfAQAAIAAJ&q=mark+v.+shaney |accessdate=October 20, 2012}}</ref>

<ref name="Boese">{{cite book|title=Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S. |first=Alex |last=Boese |page=[https://archive.org/details/hippoeatsdwarffi00boes/page/112 112] |publisher=Harcourt |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-15-603083-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/hippoeatsdwarffi00boes
|url-access=registration |accessdate=October 20, 2012 }}</ref>

<ref name="PikeEmail">{{cite web|title=baudrillard (email from rob%research.att.com)|date =August 21, 1989 |author=Pike, Rob |publisher= Marius Watz personal website|work=Computer Generated Writing |url=http://www.notam.uio.no/~mariusw/c-g.writing/cgw.baudrillard.txt |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/19970729050119/http://www.notam.uio.no/~mariusw/c-g.writing/cgw.baudrillard.txt |archivedate=July 29, 1997 |accessdate=October 31, 2012}}</ref>
}}<!-- closure for refs= -->

==External links==
* [http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/humour/shaneys-plan9-faq FAQ] for the Plan 9 operating system by Mark V. Shaney 
* [https://web.archive.org/web/19980214171326/http://www.chunder.com/text/mvsbio.html Unofficial biography]
* [http://www.yisongyue.com/shaney/ "Mark V. Shaney at Your Service"] online version by Yisong Yue.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070212000052/http://www.racinesystems.com/projects/markv/ "Mark V. Shaney in Common Lisp"] at Racine Systems.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20121102221008/http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=4MMdBw4AAADHYcv00IOKc2_Ok_mz5QyG Every Mark V. Shaney post] at Google Groups Usenet archive.
* [http://sable-debutante.livejournal.com/ "Sable Debutante's Journal"], a Mark V. Shaney clone at [[LiveJournal]]
* [https://archive.today/20130128141439/http://www.mentallandscape.com/markovtxt.c markovtxt.c],{{dead link|date=March 2017}} [http://9p.io/cm/cs/pearls/markov.c markov.c] C source code at Bell Labs

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[[Category:Usenet people|Shaney, Mark V]]
[[Category:Novelty software]]
[[Category:Random text generation]]
[[Category:Markov models]]
[[Category:Chatbots]]