663: How I Read It
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- WBZ Chicago, it's "This American Life." - You can call me Jasper. - Jasper. - Jasper. - With an E. - Jasper. - Yeah. - Okay. - And it's Peter here? - Yeah. - Hi. - Ira. - Jasper and Petter, are those your actual names? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not a joke. - Petter Jergensen and Jasper Sun Ness. This is the first time they've ever agreed to do an interview about this thing that they created or even identified themselves as the creator of that thing. This thing they made, they said it all began back in 2015. They were basically hanging out, killing time together, strung through Facebook, bored. The location for this? - At work. - Supposed to be working? - 'Cause you had a lot of free time at that job. - No, no, no, we were working all the time, working really hard. It's probably during a long break. - I liked that one of you said yes and one of you said no. They were working in radio. They were in Oslo and Norway. Anyway, they noticed on their friends' Facebook feeds, very common. People were posting lots of like inspirational images with inspirational words. And it kind of looked like there was a system behind the whole thing. Like it kind of felt like a machine should be able to do this. - Yeah, yeah, a robot could probably make that. - Could make an inspirational quote. After all, they're so formulaic. Every day might not be a good day, but there is good in every day. Have you felt on yesterday? Stand up today. The secret to getting ahead is getting started. And so, Jesper and Patter set out to program a computer to create these, to generate inspirational sentences
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