i think the people dissing the aesthetic content of his books are missing the point. making 'media' in this way opens up a lot of democratic possibilities. see his last paragraph:
"If I am lucky, this will allow the creation of content (educational material, books, software, etc.) for languages (or for subject areas) that simply do not have enough speakers, or economies that can support traditional publishing or content creation. For example, in health care, some diseases have fewer than 1,000 people who get the disease worldwide per year. Of those, only 1 or 2 might want a reference book. Using this method, the break even for a book is 1 copy, with no inventory cost (all books are either printed on demand, or distributed via ebook). Some languages have only 100,000 speakers, so no “Hollywood” producer would envisage creating programming to such a narrow audience, etc. This approach allows for this level of production (I am starting with an educational game show, and 3D personal computer games)."
maybe it's true that nothing he makes includes information beyond that one could just find on the internet. but for obscure diseases, languages, people with poor computer skills, etc., an automated way to gather this data into a semi-decent book could be extremely useful and beneficial to society at large.
"If I am lucky, this will allow the creation of content (educational material, books, software, etc.) for languages (or for subject areas) that simply do not have enough speakers, or economies that can support traditional publishing or content creation. For example, in health care, some diseases have fewer than 1,000 people who get the disease worldwide per year. Of those, only 1 or 2 might want a reference book. Using this method, the break even for a book is 1 copy, with no inventory cost (all books are either printed on demand, or distributed via ebook). Some languages have only 100,000 speakers, so no “Hollywood” producer would envisage creating programming to such a narrow audience, etc. This approach allows for this level of production (I am starting with an educational game show, and 3D personal computer games)."
maybe it's true that nothing he makes includes information beyond that one could just find on the internet. but for obscure diseases, languages, people with poor computer skills, etc., an automated way to gather this data into a semi-decent book could be extremely useful and beneficial to society at large.