Borges is really one of the most important fiction writers of all time. Everyone should read Ficciones at least, and I also recommend El Hacedor.
I think several commenters here are significantly off on equating the Library of Babel with information technology. This is a limiting interpretation. Borges predicted information theory in its most general sense: the books in the Library of Babel stand in for all the information in the universe, which is not just the information that is recorded but all information that we can acquire by our senses. Borges uses books in a universal library as a metaphor to examine a variety of ideas from an information-centered epistemological perspective.
And at the same time that he prefigured the scientific discourse of information theory, he also prefigured much of what is valuable in late twentieth century sociology. (Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding comes especially to mind.) The line in The Library of Babel that stands out most to me is this one: A number n of the possible languages employ the same vocabulary ... You who read me - are you certain you understand my language?
Absolutely. The Library of Babel (and other stories that touch on similar themes such as Funes the Memorious and Tlon Uqbar) are about philosophy - or rather they are about the same things that the broadest branches of philosophy are about - epistemology, ontology, mathematical philosophy et al. They are attempting to make one think about the broadest and most abstract topics on a human scale.
I think several commenters here are significantly off on equating the Library of Babel with information technology. This is a limiting interpretation. Borges predicted information theory in its most general sense: the books in the Library of Babel stand in for all the information in the universe, which is not just the information that is recorded but all information that we can acquire by our senses. Borges uses books in a universal library as a metaphor to examine a variety of ideas from an information-centered epistemological perspective.
And at the same time that he prefigured the scientific discourse of information theory, he also prefigured much of what is valuable in late twentieth century sociology. (Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding comes especially to mind.) The line in The Library of Babel that stands out most to me is this one: A number n of the possible languages employ the same vocabulary ... You who read me - are you certain you understand my language?