I won’t pretend that I’ve read it. I’ve read critiques of it, I’ve read a book that heavily relies on it and I’ve gifted the iPad app of it twice I think. But now, according to Wolfram, it is available for free download:
http://www.wolframscience.com/nks/
You can download each chapter individually in PDF and use something like pdftk to concatenate them.
No, I will not even pretend that I will try to read this. I have other weird books in the pipeline. But still automata appeal to me, so the occasional glimpse may happen. Then again, the web version has been there for years and I’ve browsed it very few times. Time is a resource that I cannot devote to Wolfram’s thought it seems.
Managing organized complexity 