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?
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
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!
(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.
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.
who thinks Shakespeare is over-rated, and over-valorized ? Not I. Shakespeare's plays are probably the closest to a complete amalgumation of human emotions, desires, weaknesses, strengths and courage in written form. He's the writer's writer and as such would perhaps be more appreciated by writers, not that the rest of us can't perceive his genius.
And this was impossible up until now exactly why?
Macbeth: "Is this a Slashdotting I see before me? It's URL pointing to my own server? Here, let me hold you!"
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
...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
...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.)
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.
This could have easily been done with any other author/book/etc. Lord of the Flies IMO would have been more fitting
Theorising, somewhat, but if this software was designed for IRC, it expects input roughly in the form "Name of speaker: words spoken".
Hence it needs plays rather than novels.
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)
- 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 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.
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.
It's a chat analysis bot - feed it the actual lines from the play, and it tries to figure out who is talking with whom and generate a network.
There might be a need to format the script specially, but other than that, the data should be the plays, verbatim and unsullied by preconceptions.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
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.
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
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.