Bot-mimicry in Digital Literary Culture
Imitating Imitative Software

This Element harnesses the mimetic faculty and reverses the imitation game, enabling new modes of relating to chatbots.

Malthe Stavning Erslev (Author)

9781009222389, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 May 2024

104 pages
17.8 x 12.6 x 0.6 cm, 0.11 kg

This Element traverses the concept and practice of bot mimicry, defined as the imitation of imitative software, specifically the practice of writing in the style of social bots. Working as both an inquiry into and an extended definition of the concept, the Element argues that bot mimicry engenders a new mode of knowing about and relating to imitative software – as well as a distinctly literary approach to rendering and negotiating artificial intelligence imaginaries. The Element presents a software-oriented mode of understanding Internet culture, a novel reading of Alan Turing's imitation game, and the first substantial integration of Walter Benjamin's theory of the mimetic faculty into the study of digital culture, thus offering multiple unique lines of inquiry. Ultimately, the Element illuminates the value of mimicry – to the understanding of an emerging practice of digital literary culture, to practices of research, and to our very conceptions of artificial intelligence.

1. On Bots, Mimicry, and Bot Mimicry
2. Reading the Implied Bot
3. Reversing the Imitation Game
4. An Awakening of the Mimetic Faculty
5. Bot Mimicry in the Academy
6. Being (with) Technology.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]