200,000 books, one Geek with his computers

A very interesting New York Times article covers what is effectively a stupendous mockery of the process of creating a book. But books are produced nevertheless, and some people buy them.

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.  - Infinite monkey theorem, Wikipedia

Humans cannot deal with infinity, but we can use better assistants than monkeys to reduce the time it takes. In the Information age, Philip M. Parker, has put his name to 200,000 books setting records for being a prolific author. The catch to this inhuman behaviour is an array of assistant computers programmed to fetch information online on any particular topic and compile them into a book. He explains the process in the following video.



It's unnerving to think that this process can be extended to other media like games, audio and video as well. Effectively it establishes the precedent that a person is not required to compile content into human consumption media items like books or movies.

At the library end, I wonder what this implies for cataloguers. It doesn't make sense for humans to be organizing output that comes from machines. Do cataloguers they have to be human too, or can they just be machines instantly summarizing and deriving overviews from the content?

I found some of these books here on Amazon.

The New York Times article can be found here.

Book: Future of Reputations

An interesting book The Future of Reputation, by Daniel J. Solove is now available for free online. It describes itself in the introduction:

This is a book about how the free flow of information on the Internet can make us less free. We live in an age drenched in data, and the implications are both wonderful and terrifying. The Internet places a seemingly endless library in our homes; it allows us to communicate with others instantly; and it enables us to spread information with an efficiency and power that humankind has never before witnessed. The free flow of information on the Internet provides wondrous new opportunities for people to express themselves and communicate.

But there’s a dark side. As social reputation–shaping practices such as gossip and shaming migrate to the Internet, they are being transformed in significant ways. Information that was once scattered, forgettable, and localized is becoming permanent and searchable. Ironically, the free flow of information threatens to undermine our freedom in the future.

These transformations pose threats to people’s control over their reputations and their ability to be who they want to be.

More on this topic

• Case of John Seigenthaler Sr.,who was alarmed to find a biography of himself on Wikipedia that claimed that he was involved in the J.F.Kennedy assassination. Read more
• "I'm on Wikipedia, get me out of here "

It is often thought that a team of editors or moderators could go through each item of information submitted to verify the veracity. But then the volume of information submitted in an open online environment has the potential to easily overwhelm the resources (particulary human resources) we deploy. Even more difficult are the cases where conclusions submitted online can be a single side in an unresolved debate.

The solutions to these problems probably lie in the very openness of the environment that is setup. First of all a disclaimer can be published that the information given is not necessarily verified. After that, self-assessing mechanisms can be enabled that contributors use to assess and qualify the authority of information objects found online, such as ratings.

There has been the emergence of certain organisations that offer reputation-monitoring services. They keep an eye on every online manifestation relevant to your interest and keep you informed if anything untoward takes place. One such is distilled.

Quick Knowledge bytes

The size of an author's single packet of output is shrinking. For that matter, so is the user's apetite for large books. As the value of time gets measured in sub-minute scale - who has time to read books? If you do, you are one lucky person, because I don't.

There are a lot of alternative media competing for my attention - TV, DVD/Video, Internet - each engineered to be more captive than the other. If before providers were after your money, now its your time as well.

It's a multi-tasking world, even in your spare time. After all, it is said we are only using upto 10% of our brains - so it can be deduced that nobody need care about an information overload.

I grew up reading books, used to be my favorite passtime. Best way I find to read a book is a quiet place or at most instrumental music in the background. It would also be good to have a tension-free hour. The fact that I have to work at creating that, shows me how much the world has changed. My modern multi-tasking nature does not let me sit still doing one thing - I feel too nervous, that I'm missing something else somewhere.

From the author's point of view, books take time, usually months to write those hundreds of thousands of words, formed into a coherent structure. Newer generations don't have that patience. Modern books tend to arise from a collection of previously published smaller articles.

Is it any wonder that blog site such as these generate so much more participation and output.