(post-)

POST v1.0

It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death. (Borges)

The Garden of Forking paths illuminates the

almost

infinite

function of hypertext

to drive users / readers / librarians

towards insanity --

the apparent need for knowledge of everything, in almost God-like proportions, is what brings on the ultimate downfall of man.

However,

the computing device itself, with the ability to read in languages and scopes unknown and unfathomable to us,

replicate a God-like sensibility towards knowledge and cryptic information. The Library of Babel highlights this. The hierarchy between "reader" and "author" is subverted in the nonsensical gibberish which is assumed -- at least on the surface level -- to have no direct meaning. The dually meditative and anguishing process of finding meaning within the walls of the Library seems to put more value on the reader than the writings themselves. Though the Librarians are ostensibly trapped in the Library, doomed to traverse its many halls for all eternity, the extrapolation of meaning behind this experience ultimately falls on them. In other words - will they choose insanity, or the inner-peace which comes with accepting the limits of the human brain? This choice, in effect, is what affords them ultimate power over text.

I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets. (Borges)

In [1] all [2] fictional works, [3] each time [4] a man [5] is confronted with [6] several alternatives, [7] [8] [9] [10] he chooses one [11] and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts’ui Pên, he chooses— simultaneously—all of them. [12]

dizzying an in of parallel convergent divergent, growing, times a and of He infinite believed series net times. in (Borges)

--X7tu7ps^ (talk) 10:30, 4 October 2017 (MDT)