The Information

One of the most fascinating books I've read. I love the scope of the text - from cuneiform writing and talking drums to the work of Turing, Shannon, Bush, McLuhan, and many others. It's really difficult to convery how exciting it was to read this book. It's one those books that came along at just the right time.

We are all patrons of the Library of Babel now, and we are the librarians, too. We veer from elation to dismay and back. "When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books," Borges tells us, "the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified." Then came the lamentations. What good are the previous books that cannot be found? What good is complete knowledge, in its immobile perfection? Borges worries: "The certitiude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms." To which, John Donne had replied long before, "He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book."