Typing One Page

In Episode 418 of the Typewriter Video Series, Joe ponders a single typed page -- the beginning of any creative work -- and the problems of creativity and originality. Have we ran out of original work? Has all the good work already been done? Where can we look, to when we've ran out of inspiration?
You will be surprised to know that the total number of possible typed pages, while not infinite, is bigger than the observable universe!

[@AlencarFaulkner]

Fantastic. It reminds me of The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges. French writer, Claude Simon, once said his problem was always the same. How to start a sentence, how to continue it, and how to finish it. Simon's books are stylistic marvels.

[@scottlaughlin2447]

Joe, this is outstanding. Beyond outstanding.

[@ronkelsey1983]

This is great stuff. Inspirational. So much of thought and writing is putting your own original spin on something that inspired you.

[@Channelscruf]

Very inspiring, Joe!

[@WiseSkies144]

Very inspiring Joe and very thoughtful presentation. You've got the cogs whirring! 🙂

[@Joe_VanCleave]

Thank you!

[@saulysw]

This reminds me that a deck of cards, well shuffled, is almost certainly unique. 52 factorial is tiny compared to the number you were wrestling with here, but still so huge that it is bigger than all the atoms in the universe. Never has that shuffle existed before, and never will it again - almost certainly. Even if you just take all the words in the current english language, and how many (roughly) you can fit on a page, you will still get a number so vast that it is unique. I think you can even get there in the first sentence! Permutation & combinations maths is nuts.

[@gaborlangi1422]

This was refreshing after your usual videos captured in the studio. You have yourself a great day as well!

[@dadtype2339]

Hi Joe, Awe we got to go outside, beautiful area, thank you for taking us along. The way I've always viewed this is, as unique to each owns brains, personalities, viewpoints will be affected by these, as different as we are from one another, and yet the same, there is no such thing as, all the good writing has been done, because we as a species, are so different and unique, interesting, vibrant, some of us explore, some of us don't, some do this while others do that and so on, the creative fountain will never dry up as it's own. The day we are all cloned from one person, and that one likes one thing only, and there can only be so many different ways to write the same thing, then yes, only then, will all the good writing will have been met and taken, BUT since you and I know that will never happen, there's your answer. And this has proof as to what I am saying, writing or manuscripts by authors, who never made it far or, well like with H.P. Lovecraft is a great example, by his time EVERYTHING in horror was Gothic horror, or at least what was popular, but what he was doing was so far ahead, there wasn't a place for it yet, and yes he published several stories in a magazine, and such, but it wasn't until long after his death his unique story and craft found a place, as tastes changed, there was a need, and his form of sci-fi and cosmic horror is used all over the place today in film, and works. At the time, someone, or maybe himself thought it's not unique enough, when in fact it was, it just needed the right timing. In closing: Creativity isn't unlimited, but it is limitless with each person. What do I mean? The ocean is limited, but it's more water than one person can drink, if you could drink it, one cup at a time. Stick with it and keep at it. Thanks for reading. ❤

[@MateusEmilioMazzochi]

Olá! Espero que esteja bem. Seu vídeo veio a calhar com meu desejo de relatar tudo em uma só folha, usando minha (pequena) coleção de máquinas de escrever. Parabéns, seus vídeos são excelentes inspirações para mim. Abraço desde o Brasil. Hi, I hope you're well. Your video came in handy with my desire to report everything on a single sheet, using my (small) collection of typewriters. Congratulations, your videos are an excellent inspiration for me. Hugs from Brazil.

[@allan2240]

Very very very very cool.

[@astrothsknot]

i don't have writer's block staring at the page. i have paralyses. i have so many works wanting out that once I commit one to the page, the others may never get a chance to live outside my head.

[@JeffOnWire]

Thanks for the inspiration, but take care while walking along the Rio Grande that you don’t go too far around the bend 😂

[@OneHitAway]

This got my brain going early. My one thought is that uniqueness on the page is a factor, in that if you had just a few words, you would undoubtedly have two authors creating the same page. Therefore I wonder how that impacts the extrapolation, because at some point, eventually writers would produce the same page many times over before hitting that most random, unique string of words, if they'd ever hit it at all.

[@Joe_VanCleave]

Great insight!

[@user-zt5xz5fz4q]

Amen.❤.

[@johnnyragadoo2414]

The base 10 log of 29^4212 is 4212 * log(29), or about 6159. So 29^4212 is about 10^6159. It thought I'd save some paper so I could write a story, hopefully unique. 😁 Edited to add: This kind of philosophical speculation is inspiring. Slice of life. Thank you.

[@user-zt5xz5fz4q]

Talk about Ernest Hemingway. Soon.❤.

[@eglspl425]

There are 10^80 atoms in the universe. That's how large the numbers you're talking about are: large enough to make the number of atoms in the universe effectively zero by comparison. Measuring electrons is like measuring clouds: difficult and imprecise. The next step is to calculate what proportion of those pages would be coherent English writing and what proportion would be nonsensical. I suspect that the number of coherent pages is still greater than the number of atoms in the universe.

[@ajimakhatun6058]

Joe can you please make a video how to make photo graphic paper?

[@CK-ceekay]

Now how big a hard-drive would you need to store it all?

[@Joe_VanCleave]

More than several universes full!

[@MichaelRpdx]

Let's see who can duplicate other, any other, writers, written pages?

[@Joe_VanCleave]

I’ve been curious about doing this!

[@tmunk]

I don't think you're gonna be able to find that much paper :D Also, since last year, there's some evidence that the Universe is 26.7 Billion years old. Tired Light theory and all that, ya know.

[@Joe_VanCleave]

This is why, since last year, I’ve been feeling older!

[@suvorovoleg9325]

I am a huge fan of this channel. And I hate being that guy, but. I feel an urgent need to bring some corrections. Given method provides us with enormous number of 'password' pages. Being unique, they are good for some kind of random-based game or research. And extremely useles for casual reading. Please let me make another assumption for english-speaking writer with same page. There are 170 000 words plus 47 000 obsolete but still usable words in given language. That gives us 217 000 as a size of our 'alphabet'. Average length is said to be about 4,7 letters per word. So we can place approximately 896 words per page. Let's drop it down to 800 (after all we want our text to be juicy and pleasant). So we should have 217000 ^ 800 pages of close to be readable text. MUCH less then 29 ^ 4212, but still some space for creativity. That will vary from language to language. Russian language gives us 200 000 of commonly used words and up to 500 000 with historical forms and dialects. Length is from 3.9 to 6 letters per word. Chinese writers can use 500 000 words. Length of word is a bit complicated but leads us to 4-5 hieroglyphs for two words. For exampe: "Simple message" converts to "簡單的訊息". And we can mix languages, of course. Кто-нибудь, остановите меня, этот комментарий итак уже втрое длиннее, чем был задуман!