The Existential Nature of Infinity | The Library of Babel
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Top Comments (10)
Hey Quinn, guys here 🖐
In 2015, programmer Jonathan Basile created a website called The Library of Babel. It algorithmically lists all combinations of 29 characters for about 10 ^ 4677 books. The short story discussed here was the inspiration. (I had included the website link here, but YouTube refused to post it.)
Can’t believe the YouTube algorithm hid this from me for 17 minutes
It would have been interesting to compare this with also Borge’s’ The Book of Sand in which the narrator in the story -filled with horror- decides to hide an infinite book in one of the bookshelves of the Public Library of Buenos Aires.
The short story was one of the inspirations for "The Name of The Rose" by Umberto Eco. The librarian in the novel is called Jorge de Bruges as a tribute to Borges.
Borges is one of my all-time favourite short fiction writers in any genre. Truly one of the best writers of all time, and probably top 3 of his generation (which was quite a generation of writers)!
Sounds like the author discovered Cantors notion’s of infinity and spun it into a story. Really enjoyable. And Quinn’s narration is top notch creepy as always.
“The book describes them scrambling through corridors and fighting over scraps of hope and dying in the process” Ironically, their vindication would also describe this
Real talk: your theme music always gets me so stoked.
The librarians wandering those hexagons aren’t just scholars. They’re us. They’re every human staring at the sky, the internet, the feed, the archive, trying to find “the book” that explains them.
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Top Comments (10)
Hey Quinn, guys here 🖐
In 2015, programmer Jonathan Basile created a website called The Library of Babel. It algorithmically lists all combinations of 29 characters for about 10 ^ 4677 books. The short story discussed here was the inspiration. (I had included the website link here, but YouTube refused to post it.)
Can’t believe the YouTube algorithm hid this from me for 17 minutes
It would have been interesting to compare this with also Borge’s’ The Book of Sand in which the narrator in the story -filled with horror- decides to hide an infinite book in one of the bookshelves of the Public Library of Buenos Aires.
The short story was one of the inspirations for "The Name of The Rose" by Umberto Eco. The librarian in the novel is called Jorge de Bruges as a tribute to Borges.
Borges is one of my all-time favourite short fiction writers in any genre. Truly one of the best writers of all time, and probably top 3 of his generation (which was quite a generation of writers)!
Sounds like the author discovered Cantors notion’s of infinity and spun it into a story. Really enjoyable. And Quinn’s narration is top notch creepy as always.
“The book describes them scrambling through corridors and fighting over scraps of hope and dying in the process” Ironically, their vindication would also describe this
Real talk: your theme music always gets me so stoked.
The librarians wandering those hexagons aren’t just scholars. They’re us. They’re every human staring at the sky, the internet, the feed, the archive, trying to find “the book” that explains them.