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It's a truly eerie experience — because you can find the permanent location for any 3200 character text. You can find in this library the description of your birth, every possible description of your death, every poem, every joke, every lie — everything that could be said, can be found on this site. This … thing … blurs the line between invention and discovery; did you really discover or invent that thing, if it's description already existed? 105000 different pages are offered by the Library of Babel. In comparison, there are only 1080atoms in the observable universe. I searched for what I just said, and sure enough, in this hexagon, in this wall, in this shelf, in this volume, on this page, it's there. Hello. But deep down, we feel like there's a difference between this program, permuting something unknowingly and a person actually meaning it, intending it, saying it because they wanted to, with agency. We use a finite number of symbols to say things. For that reason a library of every finite combination of those symbols can be made. But just because it can be made doesn't mean it has been said. That is the power we have.
Perhaps you and I were born too late to explore the world and too early in history to explore the stars, but we were born at just the right time, which is pretty much all times ever — to explore language — to explore what can be said. What should be said? What should we send out to space? What, that can be said, will you be the first to say? (en) |
