The computer that's writing books
Why go through the trouble of writing a book when you can just get a computer to write it instead?
(Bios [bible] installation image by robotlab)
Why go through the trouble of writing a book when you can just get a computer to write it instead?
According to the infinite monkey theorem, if you have a monkey bashing random keys on a typewriter for eternity, eventually, you'll end up with the entire works of Shakespeare.
A computer algorithm is a little bit quicker — and a little bit more autonomous, as programmer and business school INSEAD chairman Philip M Parker discovered.
He created a program that he claims has been used to write over 200,000 books using database and internet searches — and they're available on Amazon.
Shakespeare it ain't, though. Most of the titles seem to be books of crossword puzzles, such as Webster's English to Portuguese Brazilian Crossword Puzzles: Level 4; guides to medical ailments, such as The Official Patient's Sourcebook on Shoulder Impingement Syndrome; and bizarrely specific tomes about global markets, such as The 2007 Import and Export Market for Non-Coniferous Veneer Sheets, Sheets for Plywood and Other Sheets Made from Non-Coniferous Wood Up to 6mm Thick That Has Been Sawn Lengthwise in India.
We don't know how we've survived without these volumes for this long.
To see more works written by Parker's algorithm, visit his author page on Amazon.