Library of Babel

Figure 1. Imagine every book ever written.

The Library of Babel is a metaphor describing how information has become so abundant on the internet, there is sufficient evidence on both sides of any argument to prove or disprove it. This concept comes from a science fiction short story, thought experiment by Jorge Luis Borges called "The Library of Babel ":

"Imagine a planet which contains all possible 410-page books of a certain format and character set. The majority of the book would be gibberish, however, like 1,000 monkeys bashing the keys on typewriter for infinity, some books in the library would detail the entire works of Shakespeare and beyond."

This is analogous to the internet as the majority of content is generated on the basis of what gets clicks as opposed to what is factually correct.