The Hot Iguana Sat In Sorrow As Peter Attempted To Touch Ernie’s Red Napkin.

^^You probably didn’t notice it when you first read that sentence (and probably thought I’m crazy) but there is a pattern there! Taking the first letter of each word makes the sentence “This is a pattern.” What really interests me is that patterns are everywhere, whether in nature or in human behavior or in everything!!

I found it very interesting in last week’s class about the different things we can find in one simple sonnet, and in the readings was even more intrigued that we can find patterns, understand how they come about, then actually use that pattern for ourselves to do other cool things, like with the invention of the word HANGRY (probably my favorite example of shipping). But patterns can become very useful in more important things than just making up funny words to be dispersed throughout the internet. Algorithmic criticism, as described by Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens (2008), allows for the computational analysis of text and literary works for the purpose of critical interpretation. With the times we live in, data is created, transferred and shared all over the world, a million times a day, nonstop. Having the ability and methods to be able to interpret all that data into meaningful information all for some interesting findings, and help us understand more about humanistic behavior and interaction in the digital world we’ve created.

While not necessarily created in the digital world, algorithmic criticism still allows us to expand our understanding of all the world’s literary works. For example, if an author were to use specific key words in a text, we could determine the overall meaning of his work. However, that same information could also help us determine the author’s own personality, and maybe even help in identifying anonymous works by trying to match the author’s style.

The idea of trying to use a computer to find the meaning of a book may sound crazy, since computers don’t have feelings and all, but computers are very good at one thing: math. A computer can search through thousands and thousands of words and find patterns that to us may seem trivial, but as we’ve seen in class sometimes the most basic patterns can tell us a lot about a literary work.

Sources

A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, ed. Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companionDLS/