Interview: Peter Swirski, author of From Literature to Biterature

Peter Swirski, author of From Literature to Biterature, was recently featured on Critical Margins. The following is an excerpt from his interview with Hope Leman.

In recent months, I have been exploring books published by academic presses, and while poking around the website of McGill Queen’s University Press I discovered the book From Literature to Biterature: Lem, Turing, Darwin, and Explorations in Computer Literature, Philosophy of Mind, and Cultural Evolution by Peter Swirski. I was intrigued and wrote to Mr. Swirski to ask for an interview. He very courteously consented and this is the result.

You say of your book, “…my explorations, the first of their kind…” Hmmm, not exactly shy about the value of your book are you? Could you tell us what you mean by that?

Unlike most cultural future gazers, whose gaze is actually fixed on the past or the present, I’m trying to explore the ultimate future of literature by exploring the nature of beings who will create it. If my scenario is correct, “biterature,” as written by computer authors or “computhors,” will be a manifestation of the beginning of the end of the cultural world as we know it. In that sense, From Literature to Biterature is really a book about our human future in the age of thinking machines.

(…)

One of the main premises of your book is that in the foreseeable future, computers will become capable of creating works of literature. Let’s talk about what you mean by “literature.” Do you mean literature as in the works of Henry James, Charles Dickens, George Eliot or even J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown? Is that really a problem? Won’t it make life easier for publishers (no royalties to pay, no literary agents to bother with)? And if readers enjoy the books produced by computers, isn’t that all to the good?

This is actually several questions and each the size of Mt Everest. So in the briefest of briefs:

1. From Literature to Biterature employs the term “literature” broadly to encompass fiction, biography, philosophy, and other forms of writing (nonfiction is no less a form of creative writing than fiction is). As I argued in another book, From Lowbrow to Nobrow, popular and canonical literatures are all species of literature (much of the canon IS or WAS popular literature when it was created). Dan Brown is a spectacularly ungifted robot.
2. No problem at all. 🙂
3. Computhors, i.e. thinking machines, will be independent entities with their own desires and their own agenda: it’s a mistake to think of them as causally dependent on us in any way. Instead, they will behave in the same way we do: going after their goals in the manner that benefits them.
4. Absolutely: we may of course issue warning labels (“this book may be harmful to you as it was created by a machine”) but, like with warning labels about explicit lyrics in rap, this may only titillate buyers.

Click here for the full interview

To learn more about From Literature to Biterature, or to order online, click here.
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