Did Borges foresee the Internet?

Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) wrote most of his works in the 1930s through to the 1950s, and spent much of his time as the Chief Librarian of Biblioteca Nacional de la Republica Argentina (or the National Library of the Argentine Republic) by which time he was already totally blind to which he said, "No one should read self-pity or reproach into this statement of the majesty of God, who with such splendid irony granted me books and blindness at one touch."

His stories were mainly set in pre-technological past and he appeared to be fascinated by the authority of ancient text. Yet, according to Noam Cohen of the New York Times, '... a growing number of contemporary commentators -- whether literature professors or cultural critics like Umberto Eco -- have concluded that Borges uniquely, bizarrely, prefigured the World Wide Web.'

Here are some examples (extracted from the New York Times story)

The Infinite Encyclopedia

"Who, singular or plural, invented Tlon? The plural is, I suppose, inevitable, since the hypothesis of a single inventor -- some infinite Leibniz working in obscurity and self-effacement -- has been unanimously discarded. It is conjectured that this 'brave new world' is the work of a secret society of astronomers, biologists, engineers, metaphysicians, poets, chemists, algebrists, moralists, painters, geometers, ...guided and directed by some shadowy man of genius. There are many men adept in those diverse disciplines, but few capable of imagination -- fewer still capable of subordinating imagination to a rigorous and systematic plan. The plan is so vast that the contribution of each writer is infinitesimal." Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

The Wikipedia project that began in 2001, now has a total of more than nine million articles in more 250 languages. There are more than 75,000 'active contributors', many of whom are anonymous. As it grows, it becomes more influential. But its logic remains a mystery. A saying
among Wikipedia's contributors is: "The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work."

The Universal Library

"From those incontrovertible premises, the librarian deduced that the Library is 'total' ... that is, all that is able to be expressed, in every language ... When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy. All men felt themselves the possessors of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal problem, no world problem, whose eloquent solution did not exist." The Library of Babel (1941)

Is the Internet itself not the Universal Library, where one can search for recipes, medical treatments, trivia or whatever? Or what about Google's and Microsoft's announcement to digitise entire university book collections making all published works available to anyone, anytime, in any language? Or Google itself?

The New York Times