Borel’s monkey theorem states that a monkey typing at random for an infinite amount of time will eventually type out the complete works of William Shakespeare, Hunter S. Thompson or any other collection of text.Amazingly, a few researchers have actually carried out experiments studying the literary output of monkeys. In 2003 a group at the University of Plymouth left a computer keyboard in a Macaque enclosure at London Zoo. The monkeys only managed to produce five pages of text, consisting largely of the letter S, before they urinated and defecated on the keyboard and finally destroyed it with stones. Mike Phillips, the team leader [of the researchers, not the monkeys] described the results as being “stimulating and fascinating.” However, readers should note that he is actually a media studies 'lecturer' rather than a real academic, and that like everybody else working in media studies he craves the kind of television exposure which he is not really interesting enough to achieve.
But what about a real version of Borel’s hypothetical monkey experiment? The brave researcher would face many challenges in setting up such a study. Even assuming that one could actually persuade the monkey or monkeys to type, getting then to do so for an infinite period of time would be no easy task. If the group of monkeys is of a finite number, then, they must type for an infinite period of time for us to be certain that they will produce the desired text. Some form of longevity treatment using stem cells might be possible to extend the life of the creature indefinitely, but what of the computer hardware? Even the old IBM office machines don’t last forever, and spare parts and tech support could become problems. The worst possibility with this approach however is that the universe will probably end before the experiment is complete.
But what about many monkeys in parallel? Obviously to tackle an infinite problem in a finite time by conventional means one would need an infinite number of monkeys. But this approach is not without it’s difficulties. An infinite number of monkeys would be particularly tricky to house and feed. One would still need infinite numbers of spare parts, and though the population of India is quite large Microsoft probably don't have an infinite pool of support technicians.
But there is another worry here. Dealing with a small group of the creatures defecating on their keyboards is not a particularly serious problem, but what if an infinite number of monkeys turned bad? Clearly the prudent researcher would need to hold a large, possibly infinite number of Charlton Hestons’ in reserve to guard against their taking over the world. But preliminary work suggests that it would be difficult obtaining even one functioning Charlton Heston at this time.
More recently, researchers at Cornell university have suggested a novel take on the problem. They constructed 26 quantum monkeys from super cooled Bose-Einstein condensate [no easy task]. Somehow [I’m getting bored and can’t be bothered to work out how], the system produced an infinite amount of information that ipso facto contained the complete works of Shakespeare. Now either this information vanished in a puff of smoke, spiraled off into other universes, or something, but whatever it did there was no Shakespeare for the researchers.
Interestingly though, in an attempt to guard against their being ravaged by a group of 26 super cooled quantum monkeys, a second research team was working on a quantum Super Heston. Having managed to secure his participation, they forced the veteran actor into a small box containing a Siamese cat and a vial of poison. Rather than being granted quantum super powers, Heston was heard shouting “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” and something about his "Cold dead hands" before ironically dying of alzheimers, pneumonia or some such thing.
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