2026/01/27
Module 1 - From Borges to Shannon
Some pointers to the Jorge Luis Borges stories we discussed in class.
The Library of Babel
The Garden of Forking Paths
Interview with Jorge Luis Borges Borges' biography.
Information Basics
"The heart of his theory is a simple but very general model of communication: A transmitter encodes information into a signal, which is corrupted by noise and then decoded by the receiver. Despite its simplicity, Shannon’s model incorporates two key insights: isolating the information and noise sources from the communication system to be designed, and modeling both of these sources probabilistically. He imagined the information source generating one of many possible messages to communicate, each of which had a certain probability. The probabilistic noise added further randomness for the receiver to disentangle." Full article @ Quanta Magazine.
Predicting Entropy Game Demo. Refining the Estimated Entropy of English by Shannon Game Simulation. Shannon's calculations of entropy of English.
Prediction and Entropy of Languages Wolfram Demo
An experimental estimation of the entropy of English, in 50 lines of Python code
Letter frequency in English
Word and Letter Frequency in English
Entropy of English. .
Text Mechanic - Text Manipulation Tools
Shuffle Letters and Narakeet.
Using Information Theory to Solve Wordle.
1952 – “Theseus” Maze-Solving Mouse @ cyberneticzoo.com
The Library of Babel
The Garden of Forking Paths
Interview with Jorge Luis Borges Borges' biography.
"The heart of his theory is a simple but very general model of communication: A transmitter encodes information into a signal, which is corrupted by noise and then decoded by the receiver. Despite its simplicity, Shannon’s model incorporates two key insights: isolating the information and noise sources from the communication system to be designed, and modeling both of these sources probabilistically. He imagined the information source generating one of many possible messages to communicate, each of which had a certain probability. The probabilistic noise added further randomness for the receiver to disentangle." Full article @ Quanta Magazine.
Predicting Entropy Game Demo. Refining the Estimated Entropy of English by Shannon Game Simulation. Shannon's calculations of entropy of English.
Prediction and Entropy of Languages Wolfram Demo
An experimental estimation of the entropy of English, in 50 lines of Python code
Letter frequency in English
Word and Letter Frequency in English
Entropy of English. .
Text Mechanic - Text Manipulation Tools
Shuffle Letters and Narakeet.
Using Information Theory to Solve Wordle.
Claude Shannon Demonstrating Theseus
Labels: #Borges, #information, #Shannon
2017/08/24
Digital Library of Babel
Very cool algorithmic exploration of Borges' Library of Babel submitted by Stephen Sher (thanks!) "The Library of Babel is a place for scholars to do research, for artists and writers to seek inspiration, for anyone with curiosity or a sense of humor to reflect on the weirdness of existence - in short, it’s just like any other library. If completed, it would contain every possible combination of 1,312,000 characters, including lower case letters, space, comma, and period. Thus, it would contain every book that ever has been written, and every book that ever could be - including every play, every song, every scientific paper, every legal decision, every constitution, every piece of scripture, and so on. At present it contains all possible pages of 3200 characters, about 10^4677 books."
Labels: #Borges, #information
2015/12/01
Jorge Luis Borges, Information and messages
Some pointers to the Jorge Luis Borges stories we discussed in class.
The Library of Babel
The Garden of Forking Paths
Interview with Jorge Luis Borges Borges' biography.
The Library of Babel
The Garden of Forking Paths
Interview with Jorge Luis Borges Borges' biography.
Labels: #Borges, #information
2015/08/27
The Borges Library, Now in Wordsearch Form
"Two artists, Danny Temkin and Rony Maltz, were inspired by Borges’ captivation with the expansiveness of language and created the installation Borges Library." News article @ Flavorwire
Labels: #Borges, #information
2015/08/25
Library of Babel
Read the Jorge Luis Borges's Library of Babel, an optional readinf about information and meaning.
Labels: #Borges, #information
