All over the news the last week is Jesse Anderson, a software
developer in Reno, Nevada, who’s created a computer program that
will type letters at a very fast rate. He claims that, in time,
those random letters will type the complete works of Shakespeare
accurately, word for word, and that, in fact, his program has
already completed many of the poems and plays. I don’t know what
to say, except that I don’t believe it. My scepticism has
nothing to do with my regard for Shakespeare as a genius whose
plays can’t be subjected to any experiments, which they can be,
of course: it’s more to do with the improbability of it, which
amounts to impossibility, or, not to be closed-minded, near
impossibility. Perhaps, if Mr Anderson were in possession of a
quantum computer, that may happen, but, even then, not in his
lifetime, and not in the lifetimes of his descendents, even unto
the third and fourth generation or, indeed, the hundredth
generation. In any case, scientists are still working on the
holy grail of the quantu