Pat Greene Has a Marvelous Scheme to Conquer the World!

"Since most of our days are spent around machines," the Indian writes, "we are slowly finding it difficult to handle our interpersonal relationships."

Receiving all this over the Internet, Sauder cut references to the threat of economic mergers. She rewrote the sentence above to read:

"The heavily automated society of today has stripped people of human contact."

Automation doesn't scare Pat Greene. Among his many other ventures, he claims to endow a Shakespearean acting troupe in India. Greene intends to film their performances and to incorporate these images into Monkey Notes. This will create what he calls a "digitally enhanced book" -- a movie, in other words.

In his vision of the future, conventional bookstores and conventional books will disappear, and so too will traditional schools. The massive brick buildings and well-tended acres of campuses -- they should all be abandoned, Greene said, and the tenure of all those unproductive professors withdrawn. The educational system is corrupt and inefficient, he said. College is predicted to cost $50,000 a year by 2012. By the same date, if Greene can round up $200 million, PinkMonkey.com will offer a better education for one-fiftieth the cost.

The University of Phoenix has already embarked on something similar, and it's possible that what Greene foresees will come to pass. Whether he will be in charge, though, may depend on the success of Monkey Notes.

From Nebraska, Betty Jo Hinrichs said Cliffs has been keeping a close eye on PinkMonkey.com. Within a month, she said, the company will also be distributing over the Web, and PinkMonkey's advantage will be lost. Greene doubted this. Before Cliffs is able to react, he believes PinkMonkey will control the Internet market for study guides. As he sees it, Cliffs has millions invested in its bookstore monopoly, all of which would be in jeopardy if Cliffs suddenly began selling on the Internet at a third of the usual price. Hinrichs, sure enough, said she was not ready to release the pricing strategy.

In the business of art, Pat Greene thinks he can make some money. Cliffs made studying literature fast, and Greene has made it faster. "Is Mozart less of a work of art on a CD than on an old scratchy 78?" he said. "In my opinion, the technology made it better.