Firesign Theatre: greatest satirists of 20th century techno-romanticism
magazine.mindplex.ai
magazine.mindplex.ai
Around 1970, the Firesign Theatre used to do live broadcasts on the KPPC radio station in Pasadena, from a studio in a church basement. On one show they read what was apparently some piece of avant-garde poetry. A Caltech classmate of mine recognized that it was an example from Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, whose Vol.1 had recently appeared.
All I can remember from the "poem" is the repeated phrase "leave system." Sure enough, in section 2.2.5 p. 280 - 295 of Vol 1 in the Second Edition, Knuth presents an extended example that "simulates the elevator system in the mathematics building of the California Institute of Technology." The "poem" quoted the comments in the execution trace shown in Table 1 on p. 284.