Page 41 - The Revolution Will Be Automated

Like Borges’ The Library of Babel,

Clarke’s “Nine billion names of God”

explores the limits of Mere Generation.

It is all too easy to generate everything

from a given grammar or alphabet, but

will anyone be patient enough (short of

the “big G”) to sift through the deluge of

outputs to find those that have any value?

Clarke’s story is humorous because it

defies common sense (we intuitively

side with the programmers, not the

monks). God does not play random Do not touch the
Do not touch the

Robo-Buddha
Robo-Buddha
word games with the universe.

while it is
while it is

unwinding
unwinding