One of my favorite writers, Jorge Louis Borges, in his story "The Aleph", imagined a specific spot where one could view every single thing in the world, from every single angle, simultaneously, and comprehend it all instantly. In "The Library of Babel" he imagined a world consisting entirely of an infinite library, containing every combination of letters possible within a book. The world is populated with hopeless librarians, vainly searching for something comprehensible. Both of the stories are ways to imagine the infinite amount of information contained within the universe. They are also both horror stories. One shows the horror of infinite knowledge, the other the horror of being lost in infinite meaninglessness.
After I read these stories, both published in the 1940's, I was struck by how much they predicted certain developments in information instigated by Google. Google Earth would be The Aleph, and Google Books, the Library of Babel. Obviously the analogies are not perfect, Google Earth does not allow you to view every single thing on earth simultaneously in real time, but that does seem to be the direction things are heading. Google Books also intends to digitize every book in the entire world, so an infinite library is not that far fetched. Luckily, though, it will be search-able, so the horror of being lost in infinite meaninglessness seems averted.
What about the horror of infinite knowledge? Well, that's impossible. There is only so much you can comprehend. But instant unlimited access to all knowledge is not impossible. The internet is getting closer and closer to this, and also closer and closer to being an essential part of peoples lives. With the iphone especially, instant information can now be accessed by people at all times(provided they get service, of course.) The iphone can also do this.
So what are the consequences of unlimited access? Two things immediately came to mind for me. First, memorization will become obsolete. If you can access any information at any time, why memorize it? This is why people don't memorize phone numbers or driving directions. I see this as a trend that will continue in other areas of knowledge. Second, originality becomes very difficult. If all information is search-able, its very hard to think something that has never been thought before. Hence, my problems with Paleo-Futurism, and conspicuous unconsumption. Also this. When everything you can say has not only been said before, but can be instantly looked up, it is going to change how people express themselves.
Predictably, I was also not the first one to realize this. It is one of the major ideas of post-modernism. The author Umberto Eco beautifully expresses the post-modern aesthetic,
The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, "I love you madly," because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly."The internet has not only made this form of expression inescapable, but also more difficult. He can no longer even say, "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly." She could instantly search and see that it was taken from an Umberto Eco quote. How insincere!
So all this got my thinking. What would being smart mean in the future, if memorization was obsolete? What purpose would knowledge play in peoples live? How would we express ourselves? This gave me my idea for a story. Although in true Borgesian fashion, I'm to lazy to write it, so I think I'll just write a fake review of it. In the future. If it hasn't been written by someone else already.
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