The Search for search

I was reading an article on TechCrunch that was about a conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The topic was the future of search. Search is the (almost literal) key to finding what you wish to find online. During the conversation, Mr. Google talked about the challenges of trying to create a technology that intuits the desired information of the user. The challenge is made more difficult as the amount of information that is available online continues to increase. More than a needle in a haystack, it’s a specific piece of hay in an ever-growing haystack (not my most elegant metaphor – sue me).

I’m a huge fan of short stories. This passion largely started when I was in University and found Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinean author. If you haven’t read him, do yourself a favor and read the short stories The Garden of Forking Paths, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, The Lottery in Babylon, Funes the Memorious, and (most relevant to this post) The Library of Babel.

SPOILER ALERT

In the Library of Babel, Borges describes a library that seems infinite but is finite. The library is composed of hexagonal rooms in which two walls lead to hallways with spiral staircases up or down to the next level as well as a continuing to adjacent rooms and the other four walls are filled with shelves (the same number per wall), with the same number of books on each shelf, and with each book having the same number of pages, 410. To go further, each page has the same number of spaces, both vertically and horizontally, and each space can be filled with one of the letters, a space, a comma, or a period. The library contains all the possible permutations, without repeat, of those parameters. People live in this library and they live with the knowledge that, somewhere in that library is a book that tells them their future, past, possibilities, and impossibilities. Not only theirs, but everyone’s. Some try to find their story. Some destroy the books in rage and spite. Some jump through the open vents that run through the center of each room; never hitting ground. It is like Tantalus – knowing that what you want is there but that you must wade through a googolplex randomly generated letters to get to the one piece of information for which you seek – and most likely never finding it.

Written in 1941, it seems prophetic.