This weeks readings for class were a bit different than the previous ones so far.  Abstract writing isn’t my strong suit but I think I got the gist of what they were touching upon.  From Borges reading, The Garden of Forking Paths, I gathered that it was standing in as a metaphor for the Internet and the unlimited choices we have when surfing the web.  Borges says, “He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times.”  From this, I believe he is referring to the unlimited amounts of information on the Web.  Each click of the mouse takes you to another location and then each subsequent click following will then take you somewhere else.  Although, everything is linked in a way on the Internet.  We can easily type anything into Google and get thousands upon thousands of links that are related to the search in some way.  The links, even though they aren’t related in any way are networked together because they may have similar subject matter in them, ideas, or are the most viewed by other people.  So, in a way, these “paths” fork together because the Internet has done so, or because search engines like Google have done so.

The other reading by Borges called The Library of Babel was an article that related the concept of this place called “The Library” to the Internet.  Basically, this idea is one that stands in as a metaphor where there is an infinite amount of information.  All the books/information of the world stays in this “Library” that is saved forever and can be found and/or viewed whenever needed.  Borges most intriguing claim in this article was the one where he says, “The Library is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any direction, after centuries he would see that the same volumes were repeated in the same disorder.”  From this, Borges is almost referring to the Internet as a place that has infinite amounts of date that can be viewed in any order.  The Internet isn’t organized in a sense; the only way it is organized is when you search something or search for something specifically across its vast networks.