Der Wahlkampf-Phrasendrescher
(Fun project)

From the fun section of the leading webzine about the national 1998 elections. Germany's first digital politician was able to write political speeches, using the parties' original texts as input: the results were complete nonsense, yet frightenly realistic.

Considering that I wrote this script during a long afternoon, it is amazing to see how much life of its own it then developed. The idea of a computer program being able to serve as a (surprisingly good) political ghostwriter must have hit a nerve.

It received more press coverage than anything I coded before, with reports in almost every major German newspaper and magazine and even in Wired and The Washington Post. Suddenly, I had to give interviews to radio stations I never even knew they existed.