but the key is this, its not all randomness, but ITERATED randomness.
The error in the original post is the assumption that every attempt is a fresh attempt, where we throw everything out from the last run and make a random stab in the dark. If that were the case, the article would be correct. But it isn't - evolution is an additive process, where the last generation represents the starting point for the next generation.
So you're saying this accident called evolution somehow learned from its mistakes?
Well, that could be true only if you are speaking of self-replicating life. But in order to get to first life, iterated randomness is irrelevant.
Iterated randomness only happens if you have, up front, a functioning "iteration" machine.
They didn't do it with typewriters; they did it in the most absurdly improbable way of all: by evolving into humans, developing language and culture, and then, on St George's Day, 1564, giving birth to one William Shakespeare, who wrote the plays we all know and love.
As to how they managed this, I refer you to one of the best written books on the subject of probability and evolution, Climbing Mount Improbable.
You clearly do not understand the problem evolutionists have with the above. A gene is either functional or not functional. In the example above until the entire sentence is written, the gene is not functional. Therefore, until the correct gene sequence is found for the new function, the individual(s) possessing the incipient new gene, do not derive any benefit from it and perhaps may suffer harm from it (ie it may be dysfunctional before it is correctly coded). Therefore there is no reevaluation, no feedback possible.
Making random guesses is fine. I can accept that a lifeless, pre-bio world can make random "guesses" by default. But how does a lifeless world "check for fitness" and then decide what to modify for subsequent guesses? Would we expect to see the monkeys read the english dictionary that you propose any more than we would expect the pre-DNA world to design a fitness check and decide what to modify for subsequent guesses?
The math in the proof for this thread is targeting the ability of data to sequence itself naturally, without intelligent intervention. Injecting a dictionary into such an analogy would seem a bit contrary to that goal...
17 Billion galaxies, each with 17 Billion planets, each with 17 Billion monkeys typing a line a second for 17 Billion years and still the odds are basically impossible that such a result would occur. And that is a very simple result when compared to even the most basic organism. Not to mention the fact that he threw in the monkeys, typewriter, planets and paper... It is pretty conclusive that the complexity required for our system to exist rules out the possibility of it occurring randomly.