User:StaceyHamilton/BlogEntry: 2009 March 27 10:10:19 EDT

From sasCommunity

Biblio ex machina

by George McDaniel

So who says computers and machines aren’t taking over? In the past week I see that in Japan they’ve got a female robot they’re grooming as a model for the fashion industry. (She’s got a cute face, but the legs need a little work.)

Even more startling is a news item I happened on this morning. Some guy somewhere claims to have written no fewer than 200,000 books using some software he wrote. (Couldn’t he have gotten a computer to write it? Been a lot easier.) I think what the program does really, instead of actually writing, is compile stuff—from the Web, I guess—and compile so much of it, it’s not really plagiarizing. (Now there’s an antiquated term for you. In the Brave New World of information sharing, the concepts of plagiarism and intellectual property are rapidly becoming things of the past. But I digress.) The “author”—who would more properly be called the computer operator—then advertises the book as print on demand and waits for the orders to come in. Pretty slick, huh?

If you’re reminded of Orwell’s novel-writing machines, I’m with you, though actual human authors like George Orwell are so last century.

What I want to know is: what’s the next step? If authors can be made obsolete, why not readers? Why not write a program (or better yet get your computer to write a program) that reads all that stuff, so human beings can be freed up to . . . what? Flip hamburgers? Walk dogs? Write blogs?

But how do you know my computer hasn’t already dreamed up a blog-writing program? Think about it.