Zlack

2022

Course: CMS.609 Word Made Digital

Instructors(s): Nick Montfort

Introduction

A text-generator made for the comparative media studies (CMS) class, Word Made Digital taught by Nick Montfort.

The assignment was to write a very simple text generator that is nevertheless interesting and should do something new with language and computation.

Implementation

With vanilla JS, I created a SMS texting interface emulating back and forth text messages between a gen z individual and a corporate individual. Each text is generated by composing together randomly generated selection of words and phrases from the correct vocabulary.

More

My professor offered some very nice kind words about this program, calling it a "a standout [that] got people thinking about the contemporary, vernacular, online lexicon." Looking back to 2022, it's interesting to see how much of gen z slang has evolved yet corporate slang has remained the same!