marcello said:
>   Why don't you start your own distributed proofing project

because i anticipate that with further research on my part,
combined with ever-increasing o.c.r. progress from abbyy,
we won't even need much human proofreading in the future.

besides, i've already prototyped my "continuous proofreading",
and i'll be putting that into place when google hands me their
full pre-1923 library of page-scans, which i recently requested.

and, to be honest with you, i've become more and more bored
with these old books, which -- face it -- we focus on _mostly_
because their copyright has expired.  i'd say that 4 out of 5 of
the e-texts that are being posted these days are _not_ "classics".
(not that nonclassics don't deserve to be preserved as well, but...)

further, much of the copyright-constrained stuff of recent decades
is merely pap the publishing industry thought might make money.
much of it, i couldn't give a shit if it makes it to cyberspace or not...

what really excites me now is our new possibility to let _everything_
that _anyone_ might write see the light of day and find its audience.

we are finally free of the shackles of the past, meaning that we can
free ourselves of the corporate mindset that's blinded us up to now.
(and the government one before it, and the religious one before it.)
we can now travel far past the edge of the envelope; that's exciting.

so rather than converting old books from paper to electronic form,
i want to help new born-digital works find their place in cyberspace.

i want to encourage writers to see our imaginations can now be free,
in a way that has _never_ been true before in all of our long history.
in other words, the human race now has a truly unique opportunity!

don't get me wrong, i am _really_happy_ old works are being rescued.
it's just that, for my own self, the relevance of new works is more juicy.

-bowerbird

p.s.  plus, as voice recognition improves over the next 5 years or so,
i expect that o.c.r. will take a back seat to voice-transcribed books...