Here is one of those strange conversations which spring up on Twitter and die away again, soon to be lost in the ever-running stream which follows. That is their nature, of course, and although I do know a couple of people who archive all their tweets, most of us are content to let them disappear. Every so often a snippet seems worth capturing.
The participants in this one are three writers on legal technology. Charles Christian is a barrister turned legal technology journalist who edits the Legal Technology Insider and the Orange Rag blog. He is also, by his own description, a “sometime poet and fantasy and science fiction writer” with a site called Shared Cultural References serving for him much the same purpose as this site serves for me . Joanna Goodman is a well-known freelance writer, specialising in technology, legal and professional services, knowledge management and corporate communications as well as wider subjects. I write on the management of electronic documents in litigation (“edisclosure” in England & Wales, “ediscovery” everywhere else) and, if given, say, 10 days in a week, would write on other things as well. Like many people who work for themselves, we all keep strange hours. Random Twitter conversations with a wide range of people throughout the day and night give one the social aspects of the workplace without the downsides like commuting and office politics.
Yesterday’s conversation began with Charles reporting that he had fallen asleep at his keyboard. The ensuing sequence is shown below:
It is not out of the question that one might produce great art by such random means – I was in the New York Museum of Modern Art earlier this week, and much admired works by Jackson Pollock, created by the painter’s equivalent of a writer leaning on his keyboard. I am reminded also of the experiment reported by the American comedian Bob Newhart which posits the idea that an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters could produce all the world’s great books. This collision of infinity, probability and time recurs in popular culture – see the WikiPedia article here. Newhart’s monkeys nearly got there with the line: “To be, or not to be, that is the gesondenplatz…”, which must have something going for it if I can remember it 40 years after I last heard it.
Charles should, I think, have taken care to rest his sleeping head three characters to the left. A 100 page novel created in his sleep and consisting solely of Zzzzzzs would have had a post-modern cachet which multiple Vs lack.
