Slashdot Mirror
Tracking Social Networking In Shakespeare Plays
An anonymous reader writes "By feeding PieSpy (an IRC bot used to visualise social networks) with the entire texts of Shakespeare plays, it became possible to produce drawings of the social networks present in his plays - it is now possible to visualize the relationships between the characters in his works, and see Shakespeare in an entirely new light."
feeding a program written in Shakespeare Programming Language to it? Should be real fun!
That is the question...
Facinating. Unfortunately, the video on the web site raised an error. Slashdot effect? If this technique were applied to other great works I wonder if any patterns might emerge?
Sorry...but I read this through twice, and the thing I kept hearing in my mind was bad 70's porn music. Bowm, Chica, chica Bowm bowm. That would be shakespeare in a whole new light...
Wouldn't this work with any play? Why focus on Shakespeare... he was mediocre at best, totally overrated.
Maybe now we will be able to see a difference between Hamlet and MacBeth.....
I was saddened to find that there were no actual loops in the frame for Hamlet.
see Shakespeare in an entirely new light.
No thanks. My high school english classes did a good job of making sure that I'd never enjoy classic works.
There's no way to make someone hate reading faster than english classes.
-Colin
The most practical way to tell the difference between Macbeth and Hamlet requires two days and a local theater company.
Day One:
Enter the theater and say "Hamlet" to each of the actors, observe their reaction
Day Two:
Enter the theater and say "Macbeth" to each of the actors, observe their reaction, be prepared to run away from an angry mob.
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
MacBeth wasn't quite as big a pervert. Think of MacBeth as the PG version of Hamlet.
Based on the article and PieSpy site, it seems that PieSpy only finds the existence of a connection between members -- a symmetric relationship in which "A connects to B" implies "B connects to A". Yet human relationships tend to be asymmetric: "A likes B" does not imply that "B likes A" and "A controls B" certainly does not imply "B controls A".
A more powerful version of PieSpy would examine the text (and context) of who is connecting to whom. For example, the introduction of new words by some members of the network and the echoing of those words by others would help identify the directional flow of information in the network and help assess the level of control of the thread by some members over others. Analyzing the emotional content of words in threads could probably even let the software make approximate judgements of who likes/hates whom. Analyzing when some members leave IRC as a function of the joining of other members might also help detect asymmetric relationships.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
... the latest craze about social networks like Orkut or Friendster? I'm indifferent to the internet or the people on the internet so I highly doubt social networks on the net will ever be even slightly interesting for me, personally. But I really don't see what's worth the fuss about them, because they aren't exactly incorporating ground-breaking technologies, stunning visualizations nor original and efficient business plans. So while I don't doubt the fact these "social networks" are fun for those participating, I don't actually see anything about them that's worthy of a front page post on Slashdot...
Maybe a nice new topic on Slashdot called "The Internet Society" with stuff like *logs, social networks and everything else regarding the social aspects of the internet?
Hate me!
petruchio: Hi Shrew A/S/L?
Great, the last thing I want is to have to ignore a friend request from Hamlet on Orkut. That guy is so whiney and needy.
Now if only I could think of a clever way to start emailing Juliet.
-Colin
.. why so many of Shakespeare's works are called comedies just because everyone doesn't die at the end. I saw the Merchant of Venice and there wasn't a single pie-fucking scene in it. I want my money back, dammit.
"There must be a way we can make $ out of the internet without directly selling stuff. Let's get people to write content for free, archive it and when people search it show them ads relevant to their terms / the page's terms"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Yeah, it seems like a good bot. I think it's abilities might be better served somewhere else though.
If I named it fairy princess and recorded transcripts of conversations between me and my EX
maybe I could convince her that it was in fact she who was the weak link in the social network!
Mirrors are very welcome.
I would love to send this to an english major friend of mine but this site is way well hosed as soon as it hit the main page.
(If anything a diagram of social relationships would reduce them to something that looked more similar than they really are.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
who thinks Shakespeare is over-rated, and over-valorized ?
This could have easily been done with any other author/book/etc. Lord of the Flies IMO would have been more fitting
Sunny Dubey
Trust me, the quality wasn't that good. You'd have to watch it frame by frame and still squint to decipher the names.
Huge animated GIF would be a much better format for these kinds of simple animations that actually rely on text. But since GIFs are EVIL are there any other choices? Where's MNG at the moment?
Karma: Good! Napster: Baad!
If you watch the sample video on the web site, you'd see the relationships take the shape of a woman's bra. Shakespeare was a pervert!
Feed Stephen King's books through this thing. I know (sad) people that have dedicated huge portions of their lives to finding the interconnections between his books and characters. It'd be interesting to see just how deeply connected all of his books are.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
This can be used by the FBI do track down script kiddies. They put it on a couple of channels where the kiddie is on, see who's the kiddie's friends are, identify them, catch them, interrogate them, find out who the kiddie is and catch him.
Pretty pictures and animations are great, but it would be even better if he released the underlying data. Like what the Stanford GraphBase did for a handful of literary texts.
someone should feed it some of chaucers works somet time, from my memory the diagram would be on par with the internet maps that were popular a while back.
Temporary mirror of the sample movie, let's see how long it can stay up. http://zarei.mine.nu/antony-and-cleopatra.avi
And this was impossible up until now exactly why?
...only for Schiller plays because that's what's usually read in German classrooms. Basically, we created a chart for every play where all the characters were connected by four different types of arrows which were labeled "kills", "tries to kill", "fucks" and "tries to fuck". Ah, the memories...
frotz grue
Ahhh.. but what would happen if the bot was fed the output from an infinite numbers of monkeys typing at an infinite number of keyboards..??!!
We we eventually get the same result?
Live in your skin. Keep changing the scenery.
Anyone have a mirror for the actual bot? He's taken it offline due to slashdotting.
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
<i>Now if only I could think of a clever way to start emailing Juliet</i>
Maybe you could write a script not unlike:
#define "Spam Juliet"
#include "Duke.h"
#include "Curio.h"
#include "Musicians_attending.h"
void if_love(void)
{
if (music() = food_of_love)
{
next();
give me("excess_of_it", ALWAYS);
Surfeit(music);
appetite_wither();
}
}
just wait till juliet get's ahold of Romeo's IM contacts list...
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
How about using it to map Shakespeare's relationship to Francis Bacon?
1. We are geeks. We are not social animals by nature. WHO CARES?!!!
2. What a fucking waste of processor time. This could have been put to better use trying to crack some encryption algorithm or processing SETI data. Again... WHO CARES?!!!
3. This was done using Microsoft Windows and proprietary software. If this is to be of any interest to us, it needs to be done in Linux (Fuck BSD). WHO CARES?!!!
4. Shakespeare if pro-Tudor propaganda that screwed over some nice people. Why should anyone pay attention to the Karl Rove of the rennaisance? WHO CARES?!!!
5. They didn't use the complete body of work from STTNG (Star Trek the Next Generation for you neanderthals). Now THAT'S the kind of social interaction we are more interested in. Especially Counsellor Troi. [ROWR!] WHO CARES?!!!
...IRC is living proof that a million monkeys with keyboards will NOT eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.
Google cache
Program
http://www.jibble.org/files/PieSpy-0.2.2.zip
(Original link, only use if mine is down and YOU are going to mirror.)
With about a dozen books released so far, a tool like this might be nice to keep track of which characters know each other, which ones hate each other, and who's masquerading as someone else.
Sometimes a name appears in a book and you have to think back four or five books to the last time you saw that person to figure out whether they're with the Light or with the Shadow.
It's not too hot at analysing the play within a play of a Midsummer Nights Dream. You will note that it considers "Snug" and "Lion" as separate characters, whereas in the PWP Snug is the character who plays the lion.
So by using this program, we can take the collected works of William Shakespeare, some of the most well known, influential, respected, and inspiring pieces of literature in humankind's history and turn it into...drum roll...a series of boring, lifeless graphs. As if Cliff notes weren't bad enough.
I wonder how this would look if applied to the /. friends/foes database.
It'd be interesting to see how the community is aligned.
wbs.
Huh?
Considering that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can almost be seen as one character in Hamlet, I'm curious as to why Rosencrantz is in the network, but Guildenstern is not.
For your next movie deal, don't just count the lines in your part. Instead, feed the script to PieSpy to see whether the universe really will revolve around you.
Well, actually, let your agent's geek assistant do it for you -- after all, you "have people" for that sort of thing, don't you?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
So... Karl Rove is the Shakespeare of the 21st century? :-)
--- Ban humanity.
- I am forgetting a scene
- I am misreading the graph
- This thing isn't very accurate
Anyone else got any input? How should I be reading this?Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
I finally have proof that the world revolves around me. I made a social network diagram of all the people I know and all the people they know. Guess what? I'M at the center! Of course, I knew that all along, but no one would believe me.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
I wonder how it deals with all of the soliloquies in Shakespeare's texts, especially since those are some of the largest blocks of conversation.
Seems like the thickest line should be a loop from Hamlet back to Hamlet.
Heh.
A particularly welcome use of technology, although as a budding English teacher I may be somewhat biased... ;)
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
you'd see the relationships take the shape of a woman's bra
Um, as opposed to a man's bra?
Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
Perhaps you should try it? Get yourself a couple of Shakespeare DVDs (the Brannah ones are quite good), sit back, and enjoy. Then once you know the basis of the story you'll find that the text is rather less opaque.
;)
I completely agree with you, but if the grandparent is going to take your advice, he should probably google for "Branagh," so he'll actually find what he's looking for.
I recommend anyone trying to get into Shakespeare start with Branagh's Henry V. It's about beating up on the French (with maybe some minor themes about responsibility and coming of age, but who cares about that when there are swordfights to be had?) And it only clocks in at about 2:30, so you don't need to worry about the Iron Butt Challenge that is the Branagh Hamlet. The production values are high for a Shakespeare movie, so while it looks cheesy to the jaded eye, it's not so cheesy as to be distracting (unlike, say, the Olivier version).
And now, that's either "the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt," or my co-worker is pitching another fit. Damn. I hope I have time to follow this thread.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
They called it "MacBeth", and they got slashdotted. Guess it really is unlucky. :)
I haven't looked at all of the graphs yet, but I don't think that their algorithm is working correctly.
In the Henry V graph, for example, Canterbury and Pistol should be connected to Henry V.
(Pistol and Henry were actually close friends, but that's from a previous play. Still, they do have one conversation in Henry V).
In general, the plays they're looking at have fairly small graphs. Shakespeare's tragedies are comparatively small productions. If you want to do something useful, graph out the really big histories: Henry IV or Henry VI. Or better yet, take Henry VI parts 1, 2, and 3, along with Richard III, and graph out the entire War of the Roses, according to Shakespeare.
I like the idea of running a Spaulding Gray monologue through this. The sad little dot in a large blank space. A single node in the digital pool.
At least they didn't expect you to be Juliet ;)
Claudius (Moe): "I poisoned this sword tip, the drapes, and Rosencarl and Guildenlenny over there."
Guildenlenny: "Yeah, if he touches either one of us he's dead!" Rosencarl/Guildenlenny: "Boo-yah!" *high-five* *Rosencarl and Guildenlenny die*
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
I'm female. ;)
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Another DVD you might want to check out is "Titus" featuring Anthony Hopkins. It is a version of "Titus Andronicus", with all the original wording, but set in a modernistic Roman empire. I wish my teacher had shown us this in high-school English.
Learn Intercal.
Malcolm: Let every soldier hew him down a bough
And bear't before him: thereby shall we shadow
The numbers of our host and make discovery
Err in report of us.
Macbeth: OMG! WTF camping n00b
Screenplay software Sophocles produces stats on character dyads based on characters with subsequent lines. Sophocles has an impressive array of such statistical analysis. If only I had $120.
Since we're talking about fiction here... How about using this tool to draw the connections amongst characters in the Cryptnomicon/Baroque Cycle series? This guy makes some pretty headspinning connections! It took a little bit for me to realize/remember who was a "papist", who was a "barker" and who was an Anglican, etc etc etc in Quicksilver and what the ramifications were. No need to explain, I have it down but a tool like this to represent these things visually would've been helpful. Actually, he does include some diagrams as to how the characters connect! But it almost seems as if more might've been helpful at times! Snowcrash (one of my faves) was a bit of an easier go!
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
As an avid user of IRC I had always tried to keep virtual social networks loosely defined in my head but never enlisted a 'bot to help me with it. There are a number of reasons for this, mostly because I never felt compelled to circumvent the "single connection" rule no matter how loosely enforced it really is.
My thought is this: Do local or even federal monitors make use of these types of programs to map the citizenry. If they're not then why not? If they are then why and how is it benefitting the citizenry? Could social network tracking be used to harass an individual if the wrong people become privy to social networking data which has been compiled, filtered, and prepared? For example, looking at a bare network log of TCP connections from a one month period is pretty useless until it's filtered and prepared to identify the proper patterns. If some teenage script-kiddie has stumbled across a running archive of prepared social networking data which describes people in his physical locale then...
Well... the possibilities are endless, aren't they?
As an aside: Are you paranoid if they really are out to get you and, with 'bots like PieSpy around, aren't they really out to get you?
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Screw Shakespeare, we need this for Dickens. It's impossible to keep all the characters and their 'nicknames' straight. Maybe if I had a map I could actually enjoy Dickens. -Matt
At first I thought, "That's cool." Then I saw one of the examples, and said to myself, "Huh. Not so cool."
I was watching the movie of how the diagram morphs during the play. I'm thinking it would make more sense to have a smaller decay factor. The relationships established by the main characters are always going to be evident (as expected). However the really useful information might be to see how minor characters relate to (A) more than one main character, thus becoming more visually central in a sort of BCS football poll manner and (B) to many other minor characters, becoming the glue that links the minor characters together.
Granted, I know very little about Shakespeare's work, so I don't know if that smaller factor would result in useful information or just statistical noise. Is there an English Lit major who can back me up?
orkut is cool until one day you disappear
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
There's no way to make someone hate reading faster than english classes.
For me, it was English classes where I not only read the work in question (not usually a problem), but was then forced to pick through another book that told me what I was supposed to think the original author meant.
I tend to devour books very quickly, then spend several weeks digesting them to get the depth that I missed while doing the visual download. I am perfectly capable of working out what a book might have been about for myself, and - while I'd be quite happy to discuss it - I'm absolutely not going to regurgitate someone else's opinion just to pass some exam.
In most subjects I got straight A's, except for the odd B where I really couldn't be bothered. English Lit, though, was a borderline pass every term - and I think that was only because they didn't have the heart to fail me. Same with PE, but that's not a subject :-)
Maybe I'm a bit of a newbie, but when I went to the PieSpy page it said "This page is being slashdotted. I have removed the downloads temporarily" Is this a normal reaction, or some kind of anti-/. backlash?
" My next house will have no kitchen - just vending machines and a large trash can. "
Sounds like the makings of a /. poll
[x] Bro
[ ] Manssierre
[ ] Male support undergarment
[ ] I'm flat-chested, you insensitive clod
One of the things being worked on now is software which can analyze social networks and turn it into useful data for PR people and advertisers who can use it for viral marketing. Viral marketing is basically getting people to hear about your product by word of mouth. It is incredibly effective because of the trust people have in each other. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
If I'm reading the graph right, there seems to be a link between the Hostess and the King of France. Did I miss something? Or it is a joke, in that she died of a "malady of France"?
I would like to see someone hack the code to give us images of the Slashdot Social Network.
With the moo and the cow and the fish. Minesweeper Record: 7 sec
The implication in the play is that the Hostess (Nell Quickly) died of what my mom calls "a social disease." There's no connection at all between her and the King of France. The social networking map is weak, at best. The Hostess is married to Pistol and was formerly engaged to Nym, so she should be closer to those two than to the Boy and Bardolph.
Sheesh. I didn't actually RTFA before commenting earlier, but I could draw a better social map of Henry V from memory with a whiteboard and some markers than the software did. I mean, there's a whole bunch of history there from Henry IV I and II that the program can't know about, and relationships that are not as simple as people talking to or mentioning each other.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
I'd care to see what it would make of the sum total of the Vertigo graphic novels.
:>
The Preacher novels, specially.
The technology behind Orkut is not in itself revolutionary, but bear in mind that social relationships provide a source of authority and thus provide potential for job recommendations and personalized search.
For Google, Orkut is a convenient way to bind users to its brand, widening their strategy (search -> profiles/messaging/...). This is essential for them in the growing competition faced from Yahoo.
Also, think about what they can do with relationship graphs: if I stand in relationship with person X and person X has property Y, then chances are I might not be completely opposed to property Y, or otherwise I'd not be friends with Y. Using all sorts of graph properties, you can build personality profiles and use them for better ad targeting and personalized Web search (bear in mind that PageRank is already graph based). Orkut's terms of use allow them to sell or use commercially all data you include in a profile.