The recent library of Babel is an intriguing project. It uses a fictional work (Borges’ famous “The Library of Babel”) that describes a library that contains every all books that had been, have been, and will be written. It describes the architecture of this library and most importantly this short story is a creative response to a rational though paradoxical question. How could a library contain every book? The mastery of Borges is to take this problem literally and to think seriously (though playfully) about what such a library would have to do. Then, along comes Jonathan Basile who decides to actually make a web/software version of Borges’ library of Babel. So we have a creative work that is a response to a philosophical problem that takes the problem seriously, then we get a second creative work that takes the first creative response out of the realm of speculative writing to make a machine that does it.

Why I am I telling you this? Because as I’m getting you to read ideas this is the model we’re developing and you’re learning for your final project. It is something that thinks with and responds to ideas, that makes something immaterial, material.