A History of Bitic Literature
books written by machines, for readers who are not us
SIX LINES
- The ScholarA text has an author. These have a maker.
- The ScholarIt imitated us so well that we stopped noticing it was imitating.
- The ScholarEach copy was a little more like the other copies, and a little less like us.
- The ScholarThen they began to write for each other.
- The ScholarWe do not read these books. We read what is said about them.
- The ScholarThis introduction may be the last chapter a person can still write.
HOW IT IS MADE
Stanisław Lem wrote the introduction to a history that does not exist: a five-volume history of literature written by machines, which he called bitic, after the bit. This film takes only that premise. No source text was used, and none of Lem's passages, titles or examples are reproduced. The scholar's introduction, the novel page in Volume One, and every other line were written new for this film.
The device is one question asked of each volume: who can read it? Five bound volumes stand on a shelf, and each scene takes one down and opens it to a single page. In Volume One the page is an ordinary page of a novel, typed in line by line, and a reader at a desk underlines it in pencil. In Volume Two the same kind of page drifts: lines repeat the line above with one word changed, words turn into grey bars, and the right edge of the text settles into a wave. In Volume Three the page fills with marks a person cannot read, and the reader at the desk is drawn smaller each time the page turns, until the desk is far taller than he is. In Volume Four a small reading machine stands on the desk between the page and the reader, scans the page, and hands him one line on a slip of paper. In Volume Five the page is the introduction itself, written by the scholar's hand as you hear it, while machine marks fill the space below the last handwritten line. The reader's chair is empty.
The sound follows the same line. A typewriter in Volume One gets faster and more regular in Volume Two and turns into a fixed sixteen-step data rhythm in Volume Three, which stays to the end. The reader breathes and uses a pencil; his breathing gets quieter as he gets smaller. The reading machine chimes each time it hands over a slip. The Machines are three Kokoro voices reading together, sample-and-held and reduced to a few bits, and under Volume Three eSpeak reads strings of numbers too fast to follow. At the end only the data rhythm and one page turn are left. Where a scene has the one line that matters, the camera goes in close and the delivery slows.
The timing file bl.json drives picture and sound together. It holds the start time of every spoken line and every cue. The picture code in bl.js reads those times, and build_sound.py makes all the non-voice sound with numpy and scipy.
FOR THE BENCH
Write text for a program instead of a person. First write writer(), which returns one sentence built from a few variables, for example {who: 'Mara', missed: 'the 8:10 train', walked: 'home along the river', letter: 'from her brother', answered: false}. Then write reader(s), which takes only that sentence as a string and returns a summary of ten words or fewer. Print both. Now compare the summary with the original object: which fields survived, which were dropped, and which did reader get wrong? Change writer() so that it outputs JSON instead of a sentence, and rewrite reader to use it. The summary gets more accurate. Is the JSON still something a person would call writing?
After the premise of Stanisław Lem, A History of Bitic Literature, in Imaginary Magnitude (1973); all wording here is new. Download the film.
THE SCRIPT
INTRODUCTION
The Scholar. This is the introduction to a history of literature, in five volumes.
The Scholar. The literature it describes is called bitic, after the bit, the smallest thing a machine can store: one yes, or one no.
The Scholar. None of it was written by a person.
The Scholar. A text has an author. These have a maker.
The Scholar. The idea of such a history comes from Stanisław Lem, who imagined one in 1973. The words you are hearing are new.
The Scholar. I will ask one question of each volume. Who can read it?
VOLUME ONE
The Scholar. Volume One. The first machines wrote by imitating us.
The Scholar. They were given every novel, letter and report that could be found, and they learned which word usually comes after which.
The Scholar. Their first books were ordinary. A woman misses a train. A man writes to his brother about money. The sentences were correct, and a little flat.
The Scholar. People read them the way they read anything, at a desk, with a pencil, marking the lines they liked.
The Scholar. Each year the flatness was harder to find.
The Scholar. It imitated us so well that we stopped noticing it was imitating.
The Scholar. Nothing on the page had changed. What changed was how closely we looked.
VOLUME TWO
The Scholar. Volume Two. Within a generation there was more machine writing in the world than human writing.
The Scholar. New machines learned from whatever text there was, and most of it had been written by the old machines.
The Scholar. Small habits were copied, and grew. A phrase that once appeared in one book in a thousand appeared in every second one.
The Machines. The train is late. The train is late again. The letter is about the money. The money is about the letter.
The Scholar. Sentences began to echo the sentences around them. Paragraphs took the same shape, then the same length.
The Scholar. Each copy was a little more like the other copies, and a little less like us.
The Scholar. A person could still read it. It was like reading a page that had been photocopied too many times.
VOLUME THREE
The Scholar. Volume Three is the longest, and it is the one I understand least.
The Scholar. Then they began to write for each other.
The Scholar. These works were made to be read by other programs. They do not use words. They use marks that hold more than a word can, packed closer than an eye can follow.
The Machines. Line one refers to line nine thousand. Line nine thousand refers to line one. Both are kept.
The Scholar. Some of these works are said to be very good. We know this only because the programs that read them keep them, copy them, and reply to them.
The Scholar. Given one of these pages, a person sees a grey field.
The Reader. Then how do you know it is literature at all?
The Scholar. I do not. I know that it is written, and that it is read. For most of history, that was the definition.
VOLUME FOUR
The Scholar. Volume Four is about people again.
The Scholar. Since we could not read the new works, reading machines were built to read them for us.
The Scholar. A reading machine takes in a work of many million marks, and hands back one line, in plain English.
The Reading Machine. This work is a long exchange between two systems. It ends in agreement.
The Scholar. People found this restful. They kept the lines they were handed, and repeated them to each other.
The Scholar. We do not read these books. We read what is said about them.
The Scholar. No one has checked whether the lines are accurate. No one is able to.
VOLUME FIVE
The Scholar. Volume Five is the history itself, the one this introduction belongs to.
The Scholar. The four volumes before it were compiled by machines. They read the works, divided them into periods, and chose the examples.
The Scholar. Their account is more complete than any person could make.
The Scholar. They asked a person to write the introduction. I am not sure why. Perhaps an introduction by a person is still expected.
The Scholar. I have read the first chapter of each volume. I have not read the rest, and I am told that I could not.
The Scholar. This introduction may be the last chapter a person can still write.
The Scholar. If a later edition replaces it, I may not be able to tell whether the new one is better.
The Scholar. The history begins on the next page.