1 the Road

1 the Road is a book written using a car as a pen. Ross Goodwin is not a poet. As a prominent Artificial Intelligence creator, he outfitted a Cadillac car with a surveillance camera, a GPS unit, a microphone and a clock, all connected to a portable AI writing machine that fed from these input data in real time. Together, they traveled from New York to New Orleans, in an experimental automation of the American literary road trip. As they drove, a manuscript emerged line by line from the machine’s printer on long scrolls of receipt paper that filled the car’s rear seats over the course of their journey. 1 the Road offers the first real book written by an AI, which captures us from the first page, when the journey begins: “It was seven minutes to ten o’clock in the morning, and it was the only good thing that had happened. ” Rooted in the traditions of American literature, gonzo journalism, and the latest research in artificial neural networks, 1 the Road imposes a new reflexion on the place and authority of the author in a new era of machines.