An Unconventional Author
Posted April 19th, 2008 by adminMr. Philip M. Parker, a chaired professor of management science, has developed a unique way of writing books. An article in the New York Times examines his unconventional method of compiling the “meat” of a book by using his developed algorithms to collect publicly available information on a subject. Mr. Parker then, with the assistance of 60-70 computers (!) and six or seven computer programmers, compiles the results into books, producing a product that runs the gamut of genres and usually is about 150 pages long. Some of the titles he has written include “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea,” “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physician’s, Patients and Genome Researchers,” and “The 2007–2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India.”
Mr. Parker has generated over 200,000 books, and each book is only printed when a customer places an order. Although the above books may sound like generic topics, Mr. Parker has applied his theory to crossword puzzles and even scripts for animated game shows. Most of his books are full of graphics, and there have been complaints at the level of generic information given in the content. But Mr. Parker takes on an attitude that if you are not Internet savvy and need a guide to read, his books provide a basic understanding of the topics that he covers and can be useful.
Many authors would call what Mr. Parker does as cheating, but he doesn’t think so. He compares his methods to a traditional publisher, only with his computers doing the scut work.
“Using a little bit of artificial intelligence, a computer program has been created that mimics the thought process of someone who would be responsible for doing such a study,” Mr. Parker says. “But rather than taking many months to do the study, the computer accomplishes this in about 13 minutes.”
Mr. Parker is now venturing into other avenues, including acrostic poetry. He has a love for words and dictionaries in all languages, and a foray into romance novels is in the works also.
It is quite amazing what technology can do!
Happy learning!
My god, that really is amazing. This is going to haunt the back of my brain until I come up with more potential uses for such a technology. So very, very cool. I’ll post what I come up with, if anything :).
Comment by maculate — April 10, 2009 @ 6:14 pm