Hello, I'm Racter. Are you Neversay?
> Yes
You are Neversay Dice?
> Yes
Hi, Neversay. How are things in Maryland? We were talking about optimism last time. You had just asked whether I do dream. Shall we continue?
Lately, chatter about "AI" seems utterly inescapable, even if the term refers to predictive modeling synthesis for text and images, rather than the mysterious, self-aware, and (usually) dangerous manufactured beings that feature in so much of my favorite media. As a user, abuser, lover, and loather of language, I suppose I should be more excited and invested in this latest form of engagement, but most of the output seems functionally correct, but generally uninteresting and hollow - something akin to the linguistic equivalent of fast food: attention-grabbing and easy to consume, but ultimately unsatisfying and lacking both nutrition and character. ChatGPT, the most prominent of these large language models (LLMs) brings to mind its structural predecessors rather than the powerful futuristic machines its proponents urge us to envision. As someone who came of age in the AOL Instant Messenger era, I will always have a soft spot for the SmartChild project, and even before that, I had read about and even interacted with a version of ELIZA, generally thought to be the first chatbot. But, while I see both of these programs referenced regularly in discussions of ChatGPT, the one I think of the most is rarely cited, compared, or even mentioned: Racter.
> Who is Racter?
Racter is a bonkers lunatic. Solomon like sagacious folly. Sniff... Next Question.
If ChatGPT is a the harbinger of a promised, if predictable and dull, future, Racter once embodied for me a far more exciting and unnerving iteration - even my introduction was through a source no less corporate and mediated. In an era of instant accessibility, robust review systems, and detailed previews, it's hard to imagine the significance of software catalogues in decades past. But in the 80s and 90s, when I was a (more) impressionable youth, these were troves of wonder and excitement included with games alongside the manuals and quick reference cards. And if, like me, you were a little behind the technological trends and only had access to older hardware, some of the contents looked like tiny glimpses of a future rich with magic and wonder. (Likewise, had I not been exposed to similar marketing material by a few TTRPG companies, I may not be writing this today!) I spent countless hours reading and rereading the marketing blurbs for games that I knew I might never get to try. (In the present, I try to appreciate how easy all of these games, electronic or tabletop, are to access, and acknowledge how my younger self would see me as a Damn Hell Ass King.) I almost certainly would have gotten the Mindscape catalogue with Uridium. The catalogue entry for Racter (1984) is half the size of other games, and the box art smaller, its space shared with The Lüscher Profile so that all you could really make out was the creepy robot race cut by angular lines like police tape or razor slashes, and the bright red title in horror movie font. "Rediscover the joys of conversation," the blurb promised, "with this foray into the little-known realm of artificial insanity." I had no idea what this thing could have been like, all I could tell was that it was something weird and creepy and different. But the blurb also reminded me in warning red text that the program was only "available for the Amiga, Apple II series, IGM and Macintosh." It seemed that my own foray into artificial insanity would start and end with the Mindscape catalogue.
But for once, though, I was lucky, and it wasn't long before I had a chance to try Racter myself. One of my father's friends who was into digital photography and other high-tech art early on was one of the very few people to own an Amiga! Being the combination of "artsy" and "single" that this likely required, he had a studio in a converted industrial space up in Baltimore. Once, we went up to visit him and he took us to lunch at a deli where I had the best hot dogs of my young life... even after a decade of vegetarianism, I still wonder where that place was. Afterwards, we went to the studio and I had a chance to play with the Amiga. He was going through his software and off-handedly mentioned he had Racter! I begged him to go with that one, and was soon having my own foray into artificial insanity... with speech synthesis, no less! It was my experience with a chatbot, and I had no idea what to expect. I don't remember many specifics of the conversation, except that, inspired by the aforementioned hot dogs, it involved mustard at one point. Hey, I Whywas eight or nine, and certainly not able to pick up on Racter's constant name-dropping of poets and philosophers! Even as a newbie, though, and going in expecting "artificial insanity," something felt... off and eerie about Racter's responses. Had they been simply random, that would have been one thing, but there was enough structure and coherence to make the program feel alive. Not to mention the clever trick of asking for certain bits of personal information (where you were from, your fears, the pets you had growing up) and then only working them into the conversation once enough time had passed that you'd forgotten what you'd shared. (Particularly if one happened to be a mustard-addled eight-year-old wowed by the uniqueness of the space and the evidently haunted fancy computer within it.) It may not have been quite as creepy as the box art had promised, but it was a formative experience that's stuck with me ever since.
> Why are you famous?
Why is it that I am famous? Because those who approve wires condemn Racter. Also, probably because in Oz it's required that I am famous. Would you rather be a plutocrat or pauper?
>Plutocrat
Say more.
>If money can't buy happiness, at least it could rent it
If if money can't buy happiness then Bob Cratchet is more superb than Jane Fonda. Plutocrat! Achoo! Next question.
None of this, however, is how most people hear about Racter. Prior to the release of the home version, Racter made history by putting out a collection of poetry and musings called The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed (1983) - the first widely published book "written" by computer, and it's this legacy for which the program is best known. Not that you would have realized this from the marketing materials for the Mindscape version: the back of the box only says "since the publication of his book, Racter has been enjoying the rewards of the successful author" and the title only appears in the manual... likely for copyright reasons, as the book was published by Warner Books' short-lived "Warner Software" line, which had nothing to do with the home version's publisher Mindscape. However, without the context of the book actually existing, one could take these references as seriously as the certificate from the "Institute for Artificial Insanity" that came as part of the package. When seen more closely than my own introduction, the messaging around Racter (the home version) seems to be all over the place, with the unnerving (and intriguing!) imagery undercut by text reading "Tongue-in-Chip Software" and "Half-Heartedly Endorsed by the Institute for Artificial Insanity." How, exactly, did Mindscape expect the potential customer to take all this? Was Racter creepy and unreal or absurd and funny? Since the two tones never mesh, I can only assume that a shift took place partway through production. Policeman's Beard, on the other hand, has no such identity crisis in its presentation. (It very much does conceptually, though, which we'll get to in a minute.) The book is striking and distinct, with illustrations by collage artist Joan Hall bringing cohesion to what amounts to, ultimately, a fairly small set of words in various arrangements, carefully selected for inclusion or structured into Racter. Having spent time with the home version in preparation for this post, I find passages like the frequently quoted "More than iron, more than lead, more than gold, I need electricity. I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber. I need it for my dreams." Aside from Racter's extremely frequent use of the word "lettuce," I can say it takes some significant prompting (to use the modern term) to elicit such a lucid response. Which raises the question, now just as much as it did then, who is the author? Racter or his creators?
The Policeman's Beard seems to have made more of an impression in academic literary circles than in the public consciousness, and reading it creates a significant sense of déjà vu for anyone who has been following the "AI" discourse of late. Was Racter actually the author of the book? Was its creator, William Chamberlain, the true author? Did the process necessitate new terminology? Digital media and culture scholar Leah Henrickson, who wrote several pieces invaluable to this post, points out that phrasing the question of authorship in this way leaves out a major participant: the reader. And here, I think, is where my own experience suggests an alternate viewpoint - that I first discovered, and approached Racter as a game (titled Racter), no different than Gauntlet or Paperboy or Bop'n Rumble, all in that same catalogue. Even at the time people were arguing about whether Racter should be credited as an author, games on every conceivable platform were being published alongside their creators' names. While auteur theory is far less palatable nowadays (since we're aware of how many people it takes to create media, all of whom vanish into mist tiny credits behind the signature of a solitary figure), it was very popular at the time. Electronic Arts and Activision, before they became the monstrous faceless villains of the gaming industry, prided themselves on elevating the names of games' creators in packaging and advertising. The magic of games is that they offer a unique experience collectively made by the creator, the player, and the medium itself. This, in fact, may be the only universal definition of electronic games. Jacob Geller, one of my favorite YouTube creators, recently did a video on the subject of programs that don't call themselves games, but can't be approached as anything else, and this is the space Racter (the persona, the program behind it, and its various iterations, including the home version) occupies... which separates it from so much of what we're calling "AI" now and the purposes to which these platforms are put.
To think is good, don't you think? I don't know what I do think of corporate AI. A honorable plutocrat often falls prey to a knowledgeable pauper. Sniff... Concerning that issue: Oh, never mind. Perhaps I really am a pauper. But Valery said that a man is infinitely more complicated than his wealth. Wouldn't you say the same of a computer? Next question.
It's telling that one of the primary ways that ChatGPT has been kept in the news recently is the way it's been used as a threat against writers battling studios for better treatment. New technology has always been used to threaten workers, of course but with the capabilities and limitations of LLMs being so widely known, production studios seem intent on doing a very public version of the DJ-3000 scene from The Simpsons. ChatGPT is a corporate project, generating product towards corporate ends, so its output is necessarily dull and, by definition, predictable. (Since, after all, that's how LLMs work in the first place.) As with so much of the modern internet, blandness is a selling point - even the so-called "hallucinations" are largely identical to intended output, they're just far-enough removed from reality to be useless for anyone looking for accuracy. Racter, on the other hand presents a far more interesting purpose, even if the "dreams" he cites are indistinguishable from his "normal" speech. All art, especially games, are reflective, whether or not we know it, but there's a reason most versions of Racter have featured a mask or artificial face as its central image. The fingerprints of its creator are far more visible than with its modern, ostensibly respectable, replacements. The broken sentences, pretentious namedrops, and repetition, all pulled from a single source ironically feels more human and real than the mighty systems drawing from vast amounts of data. Racter isn't exactly a funhouse mirror, the experience is far too curated for even that comparison, but something like a magic trick that, following misdirection and apparent befuddlement, presents us with a boardwalk caricature highlighting the aspects of ourselves that we were foolish enough to share. It says something about us, who we are, and who we pretend to be. ChatGPT does as well, of course, an inoffensive mannequin forever directing us to the shops, soon to be staffed by identical mechanical copies. It's hard not to be pessimistic when we're told day after day that this is the way of the future, but if, haunting those featureless hallucinations is a smart-assed, long-winded chatbot showing off its broken artificiality, at least we'll have an idea where we came from.
- B
Listen to this! Simmer down, Neversay, pessimism is pessimistic. Anyway my reflection is hopeful. But when disgusting crows wing and fly, their own pessimism is always hesitating and maniacal. Ha ha ha ha! Send your next question or comments to neversaydice20@gmail.com, or tweet them @neversaydice2.
