16 May 2008

Philip Parker, author of 86.000 books


I read a stunning article about Philip Parker, a French marketing professor at INSEAD, who assembles complete books on the Internet. The 2007-2012 outlook for tufted hardbacked non-washable accent and area rugs that measure 6-feet by 9-feet or smaller in India, is one of the titles on his website. His has written a computer program that automatically generates books from rights-free copy on the Internet. After some cutting and pasting he is able to prepare a "book" on a great variety of subjects. The books, available on Amazon.com, are sold at prices ranging from $ 20 - $ 795. This technique reminds me of what I've read in Andrew Keen, The cult of the amateur. He writes about the idea suggested by Kevin Kelly to have all books digitalised and interconnected to obtain a liquid version of a book. Surfers can than annotate, cut and paste parts of this liquid book. Great news for students, but what is the value of an expert?

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