Philip M. Parker
Encyclopedia
Philip M. Parker holds the INSEAD Chair Professorship of Management Science at INSEAD
(Fontainebleau
, France). He has patent
ed a method to automatically produce a set of similar books from a template which is filled with data from database
and internet searches. At Amazon.com
, Parker is listed as the author of 107,000 books that his program created and overall he claims to have produced 200,000 different titles. This would make him one of the most prolific authors in the world. Parker publishes the automated books through ICON Group International, using several ICON group subheadings. Via EdgeMaven Media, he also provides applications for firms from different business domains to create their own computer-authored content material.
and has Masters degrees in Finance and Banking (University of Aix-Marseille
) and Managerial Economics (Wharton).
He was a senior consultant at EMCI, and an economist for Nathan Associates in Washington, DC, before moving to INSEAD.
.
. This site compiles different online dictionaries and encyclopedia
including the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), the Wiktionary
, and Wikipedia
.
). Examples include:
All books are self-published paperbacks. Ninety-five percent of the ordered books are sent out electronically; the rest are print on demand
. He plans to extend the programs to produce romance novels.
, designed to create educational materials for under-served languages. These have included programs which can produce scripts for animated game shows intended to teach English to non-native speakers, some of which are available on YouTube
. Recently he has collaborated with various projects sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
. In one project, Parker worked with PROTA (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa
) by assisting researchers to more quickly synthesize the dispersed information on useful tropical plants. This resulted in the creation of a public access portal covering the biodiversity of plants in Africa. In another he is engaged in creating automated rural radio weather programs in collaboration with Farmer Voice Radio. Similar projects are underway with The Grameen Foundation
, Farm Radio International
, and the GSM Association
, generating radio scripts, agricultural call center content, and SMS content platforms in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and India, among other developing counties.
; he reports posting over 1.3 million didactic
poems, aspiring to reach one poem for each of words found in the English language. He refers to these as “edge poems” since they are generated using graph theory
, where “edge” refers to mathematical values that relate words to each other in a semantic web. He has posted in the thesaurus section of his online dictionary the values used in these algorithms. Genres produced include the following: acrostic
, butterfly, cinquain
, diamante
, ekphrastic, fib
or Fibonacci poetry, gnomic poetry
, haiku
, Kural
, limerick
, mirror cinquain, nonet
, octosyllable
, pi, quinzaine
, Rondelet
, sonnet
, tanaka
, unitoum, waka
, simple verse
, and xenia epigram
. Genres were created by Parker to allow one genre of poem for each letter of the English alphabet, including Yoda
, for Y (poetry using the grammar structure of the famous Star Wars character), and Zedd for Z (poems shaped in the letter Z). His poems are didactic in nature, and either define the entry word in question, or highlight its antonyms. He has stated plans to expand these to many languages and is experimenting with other poetic forms.
INSEAD
INSEAD is an international graduate business school and research institution. It has campuses in Europe , Asia , and the Middle East , as well as a research center in Israel...
(Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...
, France). He has patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
ed a method to automatically produce a set of similar books from a template which is filled with data from database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
and internet searches. At Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
, Parker is listed as the author of 107,000 books that his program created and overall he claims to have produced 200,000 different titles. This would make him one of the most prolific authors in the world. Parker publishes the automated books through ICON Group International, using several ICON group subheadings. Via EdgeMaven Media, he also provides applications for firms from different business domains to create their own computer-authored content material.
Biography
Born dyslexic, Parker early on developed a passion for dictionaries. He gained undergraduate degrees in mathematics, biology, and economics. He received a Ph.D. in Business Economics from the Wharton School of the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
and has Masters degrees in Finance and Banking (University of Aix-Marseille
University of Aix-Marseille
Aix-Marseille University is a public university in France created by the merger of the University of Provence, the University of the Mediterranean and the Paul Cézanne University...
) and Managerial Economics (Wharton).
He was a senior consultant at EMCI, and an economist for Nathan Associates in Washington, DC, before moving to INSEAD.
Books on economics
As well as co-authoring some technical economic articles, Parker has written six books on national economic development and economic divergence. These insist that consumer utility and consumption functions must be bounded by physical laws, against economic axioms which violate laws of physics such as conservation of energyConservation of energy
The nineteenth century law of conservation of energy is a law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. The total energy is said to be conserved over time...
.
- Climatic Effects on Individual, Social and Economic Behavior, Greenwood Press, 1995
- Cross-Cultural Statistical Encyclopedia of the World, Greenwood Press, 1997. A four-volume encyclopedia, which recasts international national economic statistics of the world into linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups.
- Physioeconomics: The Basis for Long-Run Economic Growth. MIT PressMIT PressThe MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
, 2000. This forecasts global economic and demographic trends to the year 2100: he concludes that long-run economic convergence between different cultural groups is unlikely.
Online dictionary
Parker is also involved—as entrepreneur publisher and editor—in new media reference work projects. He is the instigator of Webster's Online Dictionary: The Rosetta Edition, a multilingual online dictionary created in 1999 and using the "Webster's" name, now in the public domainPublic domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
. This site compiles different online dictionaries and encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
including the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), the Wiktionary
Wiktionary
Wiktionary is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in 158 languages...
, and Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
.
Automatically generated books
Most of Parker's automatically generated books target niche markets (the Long TailThe Long Tail
The Long Tail or long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution...
). Examples include:
- books series on medical subjects published by ICON Health Publications and coauthored with James N. Parker. The Official Patient's Sourcebook series deals with classic diseases like spinal stenosisSpinal stenosisLumbar spinal stenosis is a medical condition in which the spinal canal narrows and compresses the spinal cord and nerves at the level of the lumbar vertebra. This is usually due to the common occurrence of spinal degeneration that occurs with aging. It can also sometimes be caused by spinal disc...
or autoimmune hepatitisAutoimmune hepatitisAutoimmune Hepatitis is a disease of the liver that occurs when the body's immune system attacks cells of the liver. Anomalous presentation of human leukocyte antigen class II on the surface of hepatocytes, possibly due to genetic predisposition or acute liver infection, causes a cell-mediated...
. The 3-in-1 Medical Reference series deals with general medical topics like hemoglobinHemoglobinHemoglobin is the iron-containing oxygen-transport metalloprotein in the red blood cells of all vertebrates, with the exception of the fish family Channichthyidae, as well as the tissues of some invertebrates...
. - a series on the future demand for certain products in certain regions in the world, largely consisting of tables and graphs, published by his company ICON Group International, Inc. One book, The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais, won the 2008 Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the YearBookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the YearThe Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, originally known as the Diagram Group Prize for the Oddest Title at the Frankfurt Book Fair, commonly known as the Diagram Prize for short, is a humorous literary award that is given annually to the book with the oddest title...
. - a series on cross-language crossword puzzle books, e.g. Webster's English to Italian Crossword Puzzles: Level 1, and thesauri, e.g. Webster's QuechuaQuechua languagesQuechua is a Native South American language family and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes of South America, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably...
– English Thesaurus Dictionary published by ICON Group International, Inc. Some of these titles raised concerns with linguists who claimed inaccuracies and ownership/citation rights in certain languages covered in these volumes. Parker removed the concerned titles from print stating that he had not known that anyone claimed intellectual rights over languages. - a series of quotationQuotationA quotation or quote is the repetition of one expression as part of another one, particularly when the quoted expression is well-known or explicitly attributed by citation to its original source, and it is indicated by quotation marks.A quotation can also refer to the repeated use of units of any...
collections subtitled Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases, each volume assembling quotations which feature a specific English word. Excerpts are drawn from public domain literary sources and reference works, and from WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
articles (identified as "WP" after a quotation).
All books are self-published paperbacks. Ninety-five percent of the ordered books are sent out electronically; the rest are print on demand
Print on demand
Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...
. He plans to extend the programs to produce romance novels.
Economic development initiatives
Beginning in 1998, Parker launched literacy initiatives, based on his consultations with the World BankWorld Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
, designed to create educational materials for under-served languages. These have included programs which can produce scripts for animated game shows intended to teach English to non-native speakers, some of which are available on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
. Recently he has collaborated with various projects sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest transparently operated private foundation in the world, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates. It is "driven by the interests and passions of the Gates family"...
. In one project, Parker worked with PROTA (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa
Plant Resources of Tropical Africa
Plant Resources of Tropical Africa, known by its acronym PROTA, is an international programme concerned with making scientific information about utility plants accessible in Africa, supporting their sustainable use to reduce poverty.-Mission:...
) by assisting researchers to more quickly synthesize the dispersed information on useful tropical plants. This resulted in the creation of a public access portal covering the biodiversity of plants in Africa. In another he is engaged in creating automated rural radio weather programs in collaboration with Farmer Voice Radio. Similar projects are underway with The Grameen Foundation
Grameen Foundation
Grameen Foundation, founded as Grameen Foundation USA, is a global 501 non-profit organization based in Washington DC that works to replicate the Grameen Bank microfinance model around the world through a global network of partner microfinance institutions...
, Farm Radio International
Farm Radio International
Farm Radio International, or Radios Rurales Internationales , is a Canadian non-profit organization based in Ottawa, Ontario...
, and the GSM Association
GSM Association
The GSM Association is an association of mobile operators and related companies devoted to supporting the standardizing, deployment and promotion of the GSM mobile telephone system...
, generating radio scripts, agricultural call center content, and SMS content platforms in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and India, among other developing counties.
Digital poetry
Parker has applied his techniques within his dictionary project to digital poetryDigital poetry
Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers...
; he reports posting over 1.3 million didactic
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
poems, aspiring to reach one poem for each of words found in the English language. He refers to these as “edge poems” since they are generated using graph theory
Graph theory
In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. A "graph" in this context refers to a collection of vertices or 'nodes' and a collection of edges that connect pairs of...
, where “edge” refers to mathematical values that relate words to each other in a semantic web. He has posted in the thesaurus section of his online dictionary the values used in these algorithms. Genres produced include the following: acrostic
Acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous...
, butterfly, cinquain
Cinquain
Cinquain is a class of poetic forms that employ a 5-line pattern. Earlier used to describe any five-line form, it now refers to one of several forms that are defined by specific rules and guidelines.-Crapsey cinquain:...
, diamante
Diamante
- Argentina :* Diamante, Entre Ríos, a municipio in Diamante Department* Diamante Caldera, a volcanic caldera partly in the Province of Mendoza* Diamante River, a river in the Province of Mendoza* Laguna del Diamante, a lake in the Province of Mendoza...
, ekphrastic, fib
Fib (poetry)
Fib is an experimental Western poetry form, bearing similarities to haiku, but based on the Fibonacci sequence. That is, the typical fib and one version of the contemporary Western haiku both follow a strict structure...
or Fibonacci poetry, gnomic poetry
Gnomic poetry
Gnomic poetry consists of sententious maxims put into verse to aid the memory. They were known by the Greeks as gnomes, from the Greek word for "an opinion".A gnome was defined by the Elizabethan critic Henry Peacham as...
, haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
, Kural
Kural
The Kural is one of the most important forms of classical Tamil poetry. It is a very short poetic form, exactly in 2 lines, the first line consisting of 4 words and the second line consisting of 3. It should also conform to the grammar for Venpa...
, limerick
Limerick (poetry)
A limerick is a kind of a witty, humorous, or nonsense poem, especially one in five-line or meter with a strict rhyme scheme , which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The form can be found in England as of the early years of the 18th century...
, mirror cinquain, nonet
Nonet
A nonet refers to a group of nine.*In music, a nonet is a composition which requires nine musicians for a performance. Spohr and Martinu composed nonets....
, octosyllable
Octosyllable
The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in iambs or trochees in languages with a stress accent. It is often used in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese poetry...
, pi, quinzaine
Quinzaine
Quinzaine is an unrhymed verse of fifteen syllables. The word comes from the French word quinze, meaning fifteen. The syllables are distributed over three lines so that there are seven syllables in the first line, five in the second line, and three in the third line . The first line makes a...
, Rondelet
Rondelet
The Rondelet is a brief French form of poetry. It consists of one stanza, made up of seven lines. It contains a refrain, a strict rhyme scheme and a distinct meter pattern....
, sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
, tanaka
Tanaka
is the fourth most common Japanese surname. The surname "Tanaka" refers to several different surnames written with different kanji: , , , , , , .-People:* Asuna Tanaka * Atsuko Tanaka voice actor* Atsuko Tanaka...
, unitoum, waka
Waka
Waka may refer to:* Waka , canoes of the Māori of New Zealand**Waka taua, a Maori war canoe* Waka , a genre of Japanese poetry* Waka , a proposed replacement for HTTP* Waka music, a musical genre from Yorubaland of Nigeria...
, simple verse
Verse (poetry)
A verse is formally a single line in a metrical composition, e.g. poetry. However, the word has come to represent any division or grouping of words in such a composition, which traditionally had been referred to as a stanza....
, and xenia epigram
Xenia epigram
A xenia epigram is an epigram attached to a gift, sometimes as represented in a xenia mosaic. Originally found in Latin literature, it was revived in the nineteenth century.An example:-With a Mosaic "Forget me not":...
. Genres were created by Parker to allow one genre of poem for each letter of the English alphabet, including Yoda
Yoda
Yoda is a fictional character in the Star Wars universe, appearing in the second and third original films, as well as all three prequel trilogy films. A renowned Jedi master, Yoda made his first on-screen appearance in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back where he is responsible for...
, for Y (poetry using the grammar structure of the famous Star Wars character), and Zedd for Z (poems shaped in the letter Z). His poems are didactic in nature, and either define the entry word in question, or highlight its antonyms. He has stated plans to expand these to many languages and is experimenting with other poetic forms.