Claude Shannon and RAW’s word processor…

But seriously, folks—as Bob Hope used to say—the method used by Tzara in breaking the back of Aristotelianism was the same method used by Claude Shannon in discovering the mathematical definition of information. Look it up in Shannon’s The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Dr. Shannon cut up prose into single words, threw them in a hat, picked them out one at a time— just like Tristan without Isolde creating a Dada poem—and from this Shannon produced not poetry but the ideas that allowed him to define information as the opposite of predictability. The basic equation is elegant, and is given also in my book Right Where You Are Sitting Now and it was this mathematical analysis that made possible the word processor on which I am writing this. 

– Coincidance: A Head Test