User:KYPark/1941

Jorge Luis Borges

The Library of Babel: in collection of stories El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths)

The story repeats the theme of Borges's 1939 essay "The Total Library" ("La biblioteca total"), which in turn acknowledges the earlier development of this theme by Kurd Lasswitz in his 1901 story "The Universal Library" ("Die Universalbibliotek"):

This and his precursory 1939 essay, The Total Library, may be responding to World Brain (1938) and The Social Function of Science (1939) as well as to Kurd Lasswitz's 1901 story, "The Universal Library."

In any case, it is clear that a library containing all possible books, arranged at random, is equivalent (as a source of information) to a library containing zero books.

In "The Net of Babel", published in Interzone in 1995, David Langford imagines the Library becoming computerized for easy access. This aids the librarians in searching for specific text while also highlighting the futility of such searches as they can find anything, but nothing of meaning as such. The sequel continues many of Borges's themes, while also highlighting the difference between data and information, and satirizing the Internet. cf. User:DeafMan

``a book of essays [...] edited and largely written by Victor Gollancz (but with significant contributions from George Orwell and others) that condemned the Communist Party of Great Britain for backing the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 and for taking a revolutionary defeatist position in the war against Nazi Germany. It was particularly critical of the CP-organised People's Convention of January 1941, [...] during the period of Stalin's alliance with Hitler. It marked a decisive break by the democratic left from its 1930s alliance with the CP.``

Towards a Living Encyclopædia: A Contribution to Mr. Wells's New Encyclopædism: London: Andrew Dakers, 1941.

``... offered suggestions for ways to bear out H.G. Wells's proposal for a "world brain."``
new encyclopedism