Afloat on a sea of books

When I read the news that Google was initiating a drive to digitise and upload to the Internet millions upon millions of books from some of ...

When I read the news that Google was initiating a drive to digitise and upload to the Internet millions upon millions of books from some of the finest research libraries in the world, my first, somewhat whimsical reaction was to recall one of my favorite stories, Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel”.

The Library of Babel contains everything. Not just every book that has been written, but every book that could possibly be written. Borges says it best: “Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels’ autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books.”

It may seem quixotic to see the blueprint of this library (which, in Borges’ story, regularly drove men insane as they sought fruitlessly for the one true book that would explain everything) written between the lines of a Google press release…

Story continues below this ad

As an undergraduate I spent many happy hours in the stacks of the main library at the University of Michigan — one of the first libraries to participate in Google’s plan. For one paper, I unearthed translations of Maoist rants attacking the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet Split of the late 1950s. It titillates me no end to think that some of the dusky pamphlets that I dug up 20 years ago, which had clearly not been read by a single living soul since the day they had been tagged with their Dewey Decimal number, might soon be accessible via the wireless laptop sitting on my kitchen counter. This is a dream come true, and kudos to Google for helping make it happen on such a large scale.

But where will it end? Certainly not with the inclusion of every book in the world that already exists. On the Internet, there will also be every critique of every book, every alternative history, every conspiracy theory, and all the real facts and fake facts to back every story up. You think we suffer from information overload now? Just wait until the sum total of all human knowledge is one click away. We are doomed! In a good way!

Excerpted from an article by Andrew Leonard at salon.com

India win hands down, skip the handshake with Pakistan

Sports1 hr ago

Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav led his team to a dominant seven-wicket victory against Pakistan in the Asia Cup match, dedicating the win to the Armed Forces and mentioning the Pahalgam terror attack. Yadav's refusal to shake hands with the Pakistani players added to the intensity of the game. Despite the lack of drama, the match was action-packed.

View all shorts

Live Blog