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Articles

The Very Real Ghost of a Demon

by Paul Tappenden

As a child, I was intrigued by thoughts of a randomized TV. The idea was simply that the screen should be connected to some sort of random signal generating device which could throw up any possible picture and would produce permutations at the rate of, say, one per second. I thrilled at the notional power of having access to views of any planet in the universe, real or imaginary; views from any possible angle a TV camera could record. The magical device would show portraits of every possible person, human or alien, and extracts of text from every possible book. It would also show every possible finite sequence of pictures; past and future events would unfold just as they had done and would do and in every way they might have done and could do.

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