Automatic Books

Via the New York Times comes the story of Philip Parker who has managed to automate the process of writing a book.

"It’s not easy to write a book. First you have to pick a title. And then there is the table of contents. If you want the book to be categorized, either by a bookseller or a library, it has to be assigned a unique numerical code, like an ISBN, for International Standard Book Number. There have to be proper margins. Finally, there’s the back cover.

Oh, and there is all that stuff in the middle, too. The writing.

Philip M. Parker seems to have licked that problem. Mr. Parker has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, “the most published author in the history of the planet.” And he makes money doing it."

So the future is one where publishers may not matter and authors are computers? It reminds me of what Roy Amara once said:

"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

We're not in Kansas anymore, are we?

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picture via xrrr