MONKEYS WITH A KEYBOARD (July 30, 2014)

Descartes’ cogito ergo sum is not exactly to my liking any longer, and so I changed it to my taste: non cogito ergo sum. When I checked this variant on the World Wild Web, I found it at once. Actually, I found many a website with the felicitous line. Many people have come up with it well ahead of me. And then I checked cogito ergo non sum, which would also suit me fine. It was there, of course. And so was non cogito ergo non sum. In praise of Descartes, humanity has come up with every possible permutation of his motto over and over again. Indeed, the World Wide Web is humanity’s mind dump. The proverbial monkeys with a keyboard have come up with Shakespeare and much more besides. In fact, everything imaginable is out there already.