Would plagarism software settle the “Dreams” debate?
Bookworm on Oct 20 2009 at 9:57 am | Filed under: Barack Obama
As more questions arise regarding Obama’s contribution to his own autobiography, I wondered whether a software program could be written to compare his known writings (which, other than Dreams, are almost non-existent), to Ayers’ prodigious output. Turns out such software already exists and at least one person claims that it shows that a 16th Century play is a collaboration between William Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd. I’d love to see that program turned on the possible collaboration between Barack Obama and William Ayers.
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2 Responses to “Would plagarism software settle the “Dreams” debate?”
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Well, probably not. I messed about a good bit with textual analysis back in grad school, and a lot of these things are pretty controversial. It would be interesting to find out that Dreams closely matched Ayers, but how do you tell between ghost-writing and heavy editing?
I strongly suspect much of the stuff that I technically edit (which often resembles translation work as much as “editing”) would come out looking a lot like my own writing.
Author Unknown by Don Foster is a fun read, and has prompted me to wonder what textual analysis would reveal about Obama’s books, also.
However, the author’s subsequent career also indicates the possibility of lawsuits, which would no doubt be swiftly forthcoming in this case.