Did Stanley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | June 22nd, 2015

While it now bears embar­rass­ing marks of the 1960s here and there, the future envi­sioned by Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey remains, on many lev­els, chill­ing­ly plau­si­ble. True, Pan Am Air­lines went under in the 1990s instead of launch­ing a space sta­tion like they’ve got in the movie, but in the small­er details, 2001 gets a lot right, at least inso­far as its real­i­ty resem­bles the one in which we find our­selves in the actu­al 21st cen­tu­ry. No less an aggre­ga­tion of brain­pow­er than Sam­sung thinks so too: in fact, they’ve gone so far as to cite Kubrick­’s sci-fi mas­ter­work before a judge as proof that the direc­tor invent­ed tablet com­put­ing.

“In 2011, an unusu­al piece of evi­dence was pre­sent­ed in court in a dis­pute between tech­nol­o­gy giants Apple and Sam­sung over the latter’s range of hand­held tablets, which Apple claimed infringed upon the patent­ed design and user inter­face of the iPad,” writes the British Film Insti­tute’s Samuel Wigley.

“As part of Samsung’s defence, the company’s lawyers showed the court a still image and clip show­ing the astro­nauts played by Gary Lock­wood and Keir Dul­lea eat­ing while watch­ing a TV show on their own per­son­al, mini-sized, flat-screen com­put­ers.”

kubrick tablet

Apple and Sam­sung have not, in recent mem­o­ry, played nice. Apple accused Sam­sung of “slav­ish­ly” copy­ing the design of the iPad for their own Galaxy tablet, a charge that in some ways aligns with Sam­sung and oth­er major Kore­an man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies’ rep­u­ta­tion for rapid­ly adapt­ing and even improv­ing upon prod­ucts devel­oped in oth­er coun­tries. Sam­sung’s defense? Watch 2001’s footage of its “News­pads” (above), and you can see that Kubrick invent­ed the tablet before either com­pa­ny — or, in the words of their attor­neys, he invent­ed a com­put­er with “an over­all rec­tan­gu­lar shape with a dom­i­nant dis­play screen, nar­row bor­ders, a pre­dom­i­nate­ly flat front sur­face, a flat back sur­face, and a thin form fac­tor.”

Even in their life­times, 2001 gave Kubrick and his col­lab­o­ra­tor Arthur C. Clarke, sci-fi emi­nence and author of 2001 the book, rep­u­ta­tions as some­thing like seers. “I’m sure we’ll have sophis­ti­cat­ed 3‑D holo­graph­ic tele­vi­sion and films,” Kubrick spec­u­lat­ed in a Play­boy mag­a­zine inter­view we fea­tured last year, “and it’s pos­si­ble that com­plete­ly new forms of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion will be devised.” Cer­tain­ly the open­ing up of the realm of tablets has made new forms of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion pos­si­ble, but I won­der: could he ever have imag­ined we would one day use our News­pads to watch 2001 itself?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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New Jorge Luis Borges-Inspired Project Will Test Whether Robots Can Appreciate Poetry

in Poetry, Technology | June 4th, 2015

Jorge Luis Borges, as any read­er of his sto­ries knows, had a lot of ideas. Some of his ideas must have seemed pret­ty fan­tas­ti­cal when he wrote sto­ries around them from the 1920s to the 1950s. But their myth­ic qual­i­ties have made them endure, and now Borges’ imag­i­na­tive, tech­nol­o­gy-rich 21st-cen­tu­ry fans have start­ed to put their philo­soph­i­cal spec­u­la­tions into prac­tice: you may remem­ber, for instance, the online Library of Babel, ulti­mate­ly to con­tain every pos­si­ble 410-page book, which we fea­tured in April.

borges robot poetry

Borges also came up with intrigu­ing and then-untestable notions about, in the words of Vice’s Daniel Ober­haus, “the impor­tance of metaphor and its lim­it­less pos­si­bil­i­ties in lan­guage. Borges the­o­rized [lis­ten above] that despite these bound­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for poet­ic lan­guage, there were nev­er­the­less dis­tinct pat­terns of metaphors that kept crop­ping up — a favorite exam­ple of his being the metaphor­i­cal equiv­a­lence of ‘stars’ and ‘eyes.’ ” Now a site called Poet­ry for Robots, a joint effort between Neo­log­ic, Web­vi­sions, and The Cen­ter for Sci­ence and the Imag­i­na­tion at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty, “seeks to put Borges’ the­o­ry to the test, ask­ing on their web­site whether it is pos­si­ble to teach machines the poet­ic qual­i­ty of human lan­guage.”

Poetry Robot

“What if we used poet­ry and metaphor as meta­da­ta?” asks Poet­ry for Robots’ front page. “Would a search for ‘eyes’ return images of stars?” To find out, the site has begun crowd­sourc­ing poet­ry from its users, who they’ve asked to sub­mit pieces of verse (150 char­ac­ters or few­er) prompt­ed by a series of images post­ed there: you can write your poet­ry in response to the open ocean, an urban land­scape, a cap­puc­ci­no, paths diverg­ing in a wood, or 117 oth­er actu­al images meant to draw out tex­tu­al imagery.

Then comes the test: can com­put­ers learn to make the same poet­ic asso­ci­a­tions humans do between word and image, image and word? If the Bor­ge­sian vision of metaphors exist­ing in pat­terns holds true, then they will — com­put­ers per­form few tasks bet­ter than pat­tern recog­ni­tion, after all. This could lead not just to, say, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence that can com­pose and even appre­ci­ate poet­ry, but poet­ic-lan­guage search engines —  a deeply artis­tic exten­sion of the seem­ing­ly frus­trat­ed nat­ur­al-lan­guage search engine efforts pio­neered by the likes of Ask Jeeves.

And if none of that works out, we’ll still have wit­nessed a fas­ci­nat­ing thought exper­i­ment, just like Borges’ sto­ries them­selves. The writer’s orig­i­nal thoughts on the sub­ject will cer­tain­ly remain com­pelling, and you can hear them in his 1967–8 Har­vard lec­tures on poet­ry (from where the clip above came) that we first fea­tured here a few years back. Who knows — they might even give lit­er­a­ture-inclined com­put­er sci­ence stu­dents, or com­put­er sci­ence-inclined lit­er­a­ture stu­dents, the idea for their next big project.

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Vis­it The Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

“Borges: Pro­file of a Writer” Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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MIT Creates Amazing Self-Folding Origami Robots & Leaping Cheetah Robots

in MIT, Technology | June 1st, 2015

Last Thurs­day, MIT released two stag­ger­ing­ly cool videos. And I don’t think I’m being hyper­bol­ic in say­ing that. Above we have a robot­ic chee­tah that’s “trained” to “see and jump over hur­dles as it runs — mak­ing this the first four-legged robot to run and jump over obsta­cles autonomous­ly.” The chee­tah knows when to jump by using LIDAR — “a visu­al sys­tem that uses reflec­tions from a laser to map ter­rain.” MIT News has more on the tech behind this cre­ation.

Mak­ing almost equal­ly big news is anoth­er MIT inven­tion — a minia­ture origa­mi robot that self-folds, walks, swims, and degrades. As the elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing web­site IEEE Spec­trum explains:

The unfold­ed robot, which is made of a mag­net and PVC sand­wiched between laser-cut struc­tur­al lay­ers (poly­styrene or paper), weighs just 0.31 g and mea­sures 1.7 cm on a side. Once placed on a heat­ing ele­ment, the PVC con­tracts, and where the struc­tur­al lay­ers have been cut, it cre­ates folds.…

Once you’re done mess­ing around, you can dri­ve the robot into a tank of ace­tone and it will entire­ly dis­solve.

One day, if things go accord­ing to plan, these crea­tures will become small enough to per­form impor­tant med­ical tasks with­in your body, and then when they’re done, poof, they’ll be gone. And you’ll have an MIT researcher part­ly to thank.

via Men­tal Floss

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List

Free Online Engi­neer­ing Cours­es

 

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Discover Japan’s Earthquake Proof Underground Bike Storage System: The Future is Now

in Design, Sports, Technology, Travel | May 25th, 2015

Behold, the inge­nious under­ground bicy­cle stor­age of Japan! What a vision of futur­ist effi­cien­cy — the only thing miss­ing is Ray­mond Scott’s Pow­er­house (aka Bugs Bun­ny fac­to­ry music).

Japan­ese cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tor Dan­ny Choo strapped a cam­era to his seat to cap­ture a bike’s eye view of the robot­ic Eco Cycle Anti-Seis­mic Under­ground Bicy­cle Park. It takes an aver­age of 8 sec­onds for two-wheel­ers to make the jour­ney — human involve­ment stops at the street lev­el card read­er.

(One inter­net com­menter won­dered what hap­pens if the sys­tem malfunctions…and all I can say is I once spent what felt like an eter­ni­ty, trapped in Disney’s Haunt­ed Man­sion.)

Giken-Eco-Cycle-Underground-Bike-Park-1-537x424

As futur­is­tic visions go, it’s a finite one. The envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly design allows for fair­ly easy de-instal­la­tion, should pub­lic demand for safe, sub­ter­ranean bike park­ing wane.

It’s also earth­quake-proof, a fea­ture which gives rise to all sorts of dystopi­an Plan­et of the Apes-style fan­tasies (replace Apes with Bikes).

Cities from Lon­don and Paris to New York and Hangzhou have embraced bike­shar­ing schemes, but the Japan­ese mod­el allows cyclists to keep their own rides. Signs post­ed at street lev­el remind rid­ers to remove per­son­al effects like pets (!) before using the sys­tem.) Unlim­it­ed park­ing and retrieval comes in at under 20 bucks a month.

It’s an idea whose time has come. As of this writ­ing, the cycle-friend­ly Nether­lands is plot­ting the world’s largest bike park — under­der­ground — to be launched in 2018.

Hat tip to Dan­ny Choo.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Turn Your Bike into an Elec­tric Hybrid with MIT’s “Copen­hagen Wheel”

The Physics of the Bike

How Leo Tol­stoy Learned to Ride a Bike at 67, and Oth­er Tales of Life­long Learn­ing

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The Art of Collotype: See a Near Extinct Printing Technique, as Lovingly Practiced by a Japanese Master Craftsman

in Art, History, Technology, Travel | May 22nd, 2015

When I was a kid,  I spent a lot of time at the Indi­anapo­lis Star, where my moth­er worked in what was then referred to as the “women’s pages.” She kept me busy return­ing the pho­tos that accom­pa­nied mar­riage and engage­ment announce­ments, using the SASEs the young brides had sup­plied. After that, I’d hit the print­ing floor, where vet­er­an work­ers sport­ed square caps fold­ed from the pre­vi­ous day’s edi­tion, as that day’s issue clacked on tracks over­head. If I was lucky, some­one would make me a gift of my name, set in hot type.

The Star still pub­lish­es — I shud­der to report that its web­site seems to have renamed it IndyS­tar… — but cul­tur­al and dig­i­tal advances have rel­e­gat­ed all of the par­tic­u­lars men­tioned above to the scrap pile.

They came rush­ing back with wild, Prous­t­ian urgency when Osamu Yamamo­to, a mas­ter print­er at Ben­ri­do Col­lo­type Ate­lier in Kyoto, men­tions the smell of the ink, in the short doc­u­men­tary above, how over the years, it has seeped into his skin, and become a part of his being.

Col­lo­type, defined by the Get­ty Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute as “a screen­less pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process that allows high-qual­i­ty prints from con­tin­u­ous-tone pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives,” has been on the way out since the 70s. As mas­ter print­er Yamamo­to notes, it’s a low-effi­cien­cy, small batch oper­a­tion, involv­ing messy matrix­es, hand-oper­at­ed press­es, and heavy iron machines that give off a sort of ani­mal warmth when work­ing.

Rather than pressmen’s caps, Ben­ri­do’s shirt­less print­ers wear hachi­ma­ki, rub­ber aprons, and pur­ple dis­pos­able gloves.

Film­mak­er Fritz Schu­mann (whose film on the old­est hotel in Japan we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured before) evokes the work­place — one of two remain­ing col­lo­type com­pa­nies in the world — through small details like the plas­tic-wrapped dig­i­tal Ham­taro clock and also by draw­ing view­ers’ atten­tion to the num­ber of years logged by each employ­ee. The art of col­lo­type takes a long time to mas­ter and novices appear to be in short sup­ply.

Should we con­ceive of this oper­a­tion as a quaint rel­ic, creep­ing along thanks to the whim­sy of a few nos­tal­gia buffs?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, no. The labo­ri­ous col­lo­type process remains the best way to dupli­cate pre­cious art­works and his­toric doc­u­ments. The way the ink inter­acts with retic­u­la­tions in the gelatin sur­face atop results in sub­tleties that pixel­lat­ed dig­i­tal images can­not hope to achieve.

Vis­i­tors to the stu­dio may sup­port the enter­prise by pick­ing up a hand­ful of col­lo­type-print­ed post­cards in the gift shop, but the office of the Japan­ese Emper­or is the one who’s real­ly keep­ing them in busi­ness, with orders to copy hun­dreds of del­i­cate, cen­turies old scrolls, paint­ings and let­ters.

Like a cir­cle in a circle…cultural preser­va­tion via cul­tur­al preser­va­tion! Per­haps the smell of the ink will pre­vail.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hōshi: A Short Film on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

 

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

 

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Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talking Dolls: An Invention That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Market

in History, Technology | May 8th, 2015

Edison doll

When study­ing his­to­ry’s most famous cre­ators, we must nev­er for­get that they always pro­duced fail­ures as well as suc­cess­es, and often fail­ures as impres­sive as their suc­cess­es. Take Thomas Edi­son, wide­ly regard­ed as the great Amer­i­can inven­tor for his work on the light bulb, the movie cam­era, and the phono­graph. We all know about those achieve­ments, all of which shaped tech­nolo­gies which went on to near-uni­ver­sal use, but have you heard of Edis­on’s still-pio­neer­ing but rather less well-known work in the field of talk­ing dolls?

Many of us in the past few gen­er­a­tions grew up with talk­ing dolls of one kind or anoth­er. But had we been chil­dren in 1890, we might have grown up with the very first talk­ing dolls, for which Edi­son designed an inter­nal mech­a­nism that played one of sev­er­al wax cylin­ders pre-record­ed with var­i­ous child-ori­ent­ed songs, prayers, and nurs­ery rhymes. Or rather, we might have grown up with them if we came from wealthy fam­i­lies: they cost between $10 and $20 in 1890 dol­lars, or up to $526 in today’s dol­lars.

And even at that price, Edis­on’s talk­ing dolls pro­vid­ed not just the low­est of lo-fi lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences, but resound­ing­ly creepy ones at that. “The pub­lic react­ed as one does when con­front­ed with a grandmother’s mas­sive doll col­lec­tion: You avert­ed your eyes in fear,” writes PBS’ Joshua Bara­jas. “After six weeks into pro­duc­tion, the dolls were deemed too scary and pulled from the mar­ket, the New York Times report­ed.”

Edison dollad

But now, thanks to opti­cal audio-scan­ning tech­nol­o­gy unimag­in­able in Edis­on’s day, we can hear the dolls’ ren­di­tions of “Twin­kle, Twin­kle, Lit­tle Star,” “Hick­o­ry, Dick­o­ry, Dock,” and — most eeri­ly of all — “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” just as the chil­dren of 1890 would have heard them. But even this seri­ous­ly wrong­head­ed-seem­ing prod­uct paved the way for not just the less dis­turb­ing Fur­bys and Ted­dy Rux­pins of more recent child­hoods, but, giv­en its unprece­dent­ed use of auto record­ings made for enter­tain­ment pur­pos­es, the entire record indus­try — and, of course, the minor but robust sub­genre of talk­ing-doll hor­ror movies.

via PBS News Hour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Edi­son and Niko­la Tes­la Face Off in “Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry”

A Brief, Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Thomas Edi­son (and Niko­la Tes­la)

Thomas Edi­son & His Trusty Kine­to­scope Cre­ate the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Do Not Track: Interactive Film Series Reveals the Personal Information You’re Giving Away on the Web

in Google, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | May 1st, 2015

If Face­book knows every­thing about you, it’s because you hand­ed it the keys to your king­dom.  You post­ed a pho­to, liked a favorite child­hood TV show, and will­ing­ly vol­un­teered your birth­day. In oth­er words, you hand­ed it all the data it needs to annoy you with tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing.

(In my case, it’s an ancient secret that helped a mid­dle aged mom shave 5 inch­es off her waist­line. Let me save you a click: acai berries.)

Film­mak­er Brett Gay­lor (a “lefty Cana­di­an dad who reads sci­ence fic­tion) seeks to set the record straight regard­ing the web economy’s impact on per­son­al pri­va­cy.

Watch­ing his inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary web series, Do Not Track, you’ll inevitably arrive at a cross­roads where you must decide whether or not to share your per­son­al infor­ma­tion. No big­gie, right? It’s what hap­pens every time you con­sent to “log in with Face­book.”

Every time you choose this con­ve­nience, you’re allow­ing Google and oth­er big time track­ers to stick a har­poon (aka cook­ie) in your side. Swim all you want, lit­tle fishy. You’re not exact­ly get­ting away, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re logged in with a mobile device with a com­pul­sion to reveal your where­abouts.

You say you have noth­ing to hide? Bul­ly for you! What you may not have con­sid­ered is the impact your dig­i­tal easy-breezi­ness has on friends. Your net­work. And vice ver­sa. Tag away!

In this are­na, every “like”—from an acquaintance’s recent­ly launched organ­ic skin­care line to Star Trek—helps track­ers build a sur­pris­ing­ly accu­rate por­trait, one that can be used to deter­mine how insur­able you are, how wor­thy of a loan. Gen­der and age aren’t the only fac­tors that mat­ter here. So does your demon­strat­ed extra­ver­sion, your degree of open­ness.

(Ha ha, and you thought it cost you noth­ing to “like” that acquaintance’s smelly straw­ber­ry-scent­ed mois­tur­iz­er!)

To get the most out of Do Not Track, you’ll want to sup­ply its pro­duc­ers with your email address on your first vis­it. It’s a lit­tle counter-intu­itive, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, but doing so will pro­vide you with a unique con­fig­u­ra­tion that promis­es to lift the veil on what the track­ers know about you.

What does it say about me that I couldn’t get my Face­book log-in to work? How dis­ap­point­ing that this fail­ure meant I would be view­ing results tai­lored to Episode 3’s star, Ger­man jour­nal­ist Richard Gut­jahr?

(Your pro­file… says that your age is 42 and your gen­der is male. But the real gold mine is your Face­book data over time. By ana­lyz­ing the at least 129 things you have liked on Face­book, we have used our advanced algo­rithm tech­niques to assess your per­son­al­i­ty and have found you scored high­est in Open­ness which indi­cates you are cre­ative, imag­i­na­tive, and adven­tur­ous. Our per­son­al­i­ty eval­u­a­tion sys­tem uses Psy­cho-demo­graph­ic trait pre­dic­tions pow­ered by the Apply Mag­ic Sauce API devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Psy­cho­met­rics Cen­tre.)

I think the take­away is that I am not too on top of my pri­va­cy set­tings. And why would I be? I’m an extro­vert with noth­ing to hide, except my spend­ing habits, brows­ing his­to­ry, race, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus…

Should we take a tip from our high school brethren, who evade the scruti­ny of col­lege admis­sions coun­selors by adopt­ing some ridicu­lous, evoca­tive pseu­do­nym? Expect upcom­ing episodes of Do Not Track to help us nav­i­gate these and oth­er dig­i­tal issues.

Tune in to Do Not Track here. You can find episodes 1, 2 and 3 cur­rent­ly online. Episodes 4–6 will roll out between May 12 and June 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Internet’s Own Boy: New Doc­u­men­tary About Aaron Swartz Now Free Online

A Threat to Inter­net Free­dom: Film­mak­er Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er Explains Why Net Neu­tral­i­ty Mat­ters

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

Ayun Hal­l­i­day an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine invites you to look into her very soul @AyunHalliday

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Visit The Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Virtual Reality

in Literature, Technology | April 27th, 2015

Red Book

Jorge Luis Borges spe­cial­ized in envi­sion­ing the unen­vi­sion­able: a map the same size as the land it depicts, an event whose pos­si­ble out­comes all occur simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, a sin­gle point in space con­tain­ing all oth­er points in space, a vast library con­tain­ing all pos­si­ble books. That last, the set­ting, sub­ject, and title of his short sto­ry “The Library of Babel,” has giv­en read­ers much to think about since its first pub­li­ca­tion in 1941, and in recent decades has done more than its part to bol­ster Borges’ posthu­mous rep­u­ta­tion as a seer of our unprece­dent­ed­ly rich but often dif­fi­cult-to-nav­i­gate new media land­scape.

Borges imag­ined the Library of Babel com­pris­ing a huge num­ber of con­nect­ed hexag­o­nal rooms lined by book­shelves. “Each shelf con­tains thir­ty-five books of uni­form for­mat; each book is of four hun­dred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines, each line, of some eighty let­ters which are black in col­or.” Each book con­tains a dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tion of let­ters, and in total they con­tain all pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions of let­ters, with the result that the Library as a whole con­tains

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.

This vision has inspired a fair few thinkers, includ­ing most recent­ly Brook­lyn author and pro­gram­mer Jonathan Basile. “I was lying in bed one night and the idea of an online Library of Babel popped into my head,” he says in an inter­view with Fla­vor­wire.  “My first thought was — it must exist already. It seems like such a nat­ur­al exten­sion of the capa­bil­i­ties of a com­put­er that I was sure some­one would have made it. The next day I looked for it, a bit excit­ed­ly, and was dis­ap­point­ed. From then on, it’s kind of been a reluc­tant des­tiny for me.”

As the fruit of that des­tiny, we have libraryofbabel.info, a new web site that will the­o­ret­i­cal­ly come to con­tain exact­ly what Borges’ Library of Babel con­tains: the text of every pos­si­ble 410-page book. You can start look­ing through them by search­ing for text, view­ing a ran­dom book, or brows­ing by hexag­o­nal cham­ber. You’ll notice that the vast, vast major­i­ty of Basile’s Library of Babel offers noth­ing but non­sense — the very same thing, in oth­er words, that Borges’ does, which in his telling caus­es great frus­tra­tion among the luck­less librar­i­ans charged with main­tain­ing the place.

But a vis­it to the online Library of Babel should bring you to the same ques­tion the orig­i­nal sto­ry does: to what extent does mean­ing reside in the phys­i­cal world, and to what extent does it reside in our minds? And what would Borges him­self make of all this? “He was nev­er one to take the bor­der between real­i­ty and fic­tion too seri­ous­ly,” says Basile. “Read­ing his sto­ry is already, in its own way, enter­ing the world of the library. In a sense it’s a hor­ror sto­ry, but it feels to me more like a black com­e­dy. Per­haps he would just laugh.”

Enter the online Library of Babel here.

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

“Borges: Pro­file of a Writer” Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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