In 1857, James John Garth Wilkinson published Improvisations from the Spirit, a collection of poetry conceived as an experiment with “automatic writing,” which the author claimed was guided by the ...

You don’t need a Ouija board or a psychic to connect with the spirit world; sometimes all it takes is a piece of paper and a writing instrument. “Automatic writing is a psychic activity,” explains ...

In the Richard Powers novel Galatea 2.2, a cognitive neurologist and a novelist endeavor to create a neural net sentient enough to pass a PhD comprehensive in English literature. The machine, dubbed ...

Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/10554017/10554018" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player ...