The primary source of serendipity triggers would be presentations or feedback that independently prepared systems find meaningful and useful. A typical example might be a poem shared by one system that another system finds particularly interesting. The listener might make a note to the effect “I would like to be able to write like that” or “I hope that my poetry doesn’t sound like that.” In a typical Writers Workshop, used as intended, feedback might arrive that would cause the presenting system to change its writing. A more unexpected result would be for a system to change its genre, e.g. to switch from writing poems to writing programs.

Here’s what might happen in a discussion of the first few lines of “On Being Malevolent,” written by an early user-defined flow chart in the FloWr system (known at the time as Flow) \cite{colton-flowcharting}. Note that for this dialogue to be possible, it would presumably have to be conducted within a lightweight process language, as discussed above. Nevertheless, for convenience, the discussion will be presented here as if it was conducted in natural language. Whether contemporary systems have adequate natural language understanding to have interesting interactions is one of the key unanswered questions of this approach, but protocols like the ones described above would be sufficient to make the experiment.

“I hear the souls of the damned waiting in hell. / I feel a malevolent spectre hovering just behind me / It must be his birthday.” I think the third line detracts from the spooky effect, I don’t see why it’s included. It’s meant to be humourous – in fact it reminds me of the poem you presented yesterday. Let’s discuss one poem at a time.

To the extent possible, exchanges in the process language should be a matter of dynamics rather than representation: this is another way to say that “triggers” should be independent of their “results.” Someone saying something in the workshop does not cause the participant to act, but rather, to think. For example, even if, perhaps and especially because, cross-talk about different poems is bending the rules, the dialogue above could prompt a range of reflections and reactions. System A may object that it had a fair point that has not been given sufficient attention, while System B may wonder how to communicate the idea it came up with without making reference to another poem.