“A library of the future might also be, at its best, a sanctuary where we are encouraged to spend entire hours looking at just one thing.” —Michael Agresta, “What Will Become of the Library?” Slate (2014)
The library of the future is more or less the same. That is, the branch is an actual and metaphoric Faraday cage. You enter, a node and a target, streamed at and pushed and yanked, penetrated by and extruding information, sloppy with it. And then your implants are cut off. Your watch, your glasses, jacket, underwear, your lenses, tablet, chips, your nanos—all go dry.
You’ve come to the library as usual out of desperation, yearning, boredom. There is a heart of uncertainty in your life, and you might wish to ask the library any number of questions: Should you take this job or that one? Won’t you ever get out of debt? Will he ever love you? Does she love you enough? Enough to leave her wife? Why, after all this time, did he show up again? Why can’t I sleep? I think my kid thinks I’m stupid. Why do I sleep so much? Why oh why am I so fucked up?
The librarian sits in a wooden chair, dressed in starched, sharply pressed clothing, muted colors. Today it’s the skinny dapper dude. You slightly prefer him to the short hairy man, but above all you like the zaftig disheveled woman—though, in fact, they are all remarkably similar: efficient, a sad vulnerability offset by an almost smug confidence in their training and knowledge, impersonal yet generous. These librarians of the future.
Since this isn’t your first visit to the branch—you’re a regular—you can skip the usual orientations: the ritual data entry of blood type and genome sequence, the small pendulum and cutting of card deck, the opening up of palm and the tossing of yarrow. Those kinds of biometrics are for the newfangled anyway. Most of the time, here, it’s the more traditional talk therapy. What brings you in today? How did that make you feel? What were they like? Pretend she’s sitting in this chair.
“I got a weird call from my sister,” you say. “Her son is developing an eating disorder, and I wanted to tell her it’s because our mother was a monster and you’re becoming exactly the same … I never felt comfortable enough in my own skin … Always trying to please them, to please everyone, get them to like me … After we hung up, I wanted to eat the phone I was so mad …”
The librarian listens and prods and nods. Near the end, before you both rise, he repeats the usual admonitions, prayers, and liturgy. He says, “The infinite library, which is outside the library, is not the library. The world is everything that is the case. Relieve me of the bondage of self. The true library is human error, metonym, forgetting. To study the self is to forget the self. The library is not the map and is not the territory; the library is the map and the library is the territory. The empire never ended. It’s a small world after all …” You get tired of the mumbo jumbo but nonetheless respect the ritual.
You finish the advisory interview with a tour. He takes your arm and guides you around the stacks. He points out a new Japanese crime novel, a recently published translation of a Uruguayan rapper’s lyrics, and a popular cookbook of Basque cuisine. As always, he says—before disappearing to his next appointment—the most important thing is to take the time to browse.
You do and find a new series of yaoi manga and a trashy history of the Russian Revolution. In an overstuffed leather armchair, you spend a few hours reading the Uruguayan rapper’s compositions. They are startling, and they articulate for you dense intergenerational griefs you hadn’t before known you’d been carrying. Looking up, you realize the afternoon is nearly over. You put the books in a bag and feel their promising weight. The clouded, unbodied versions of these are out there, weightless, in the infinite library, but you came here to have these minds manifested in the physical; virtual reality machines made out of printed voice; handheld AI instantiated by paper, cardboard, and reader response.
Your steps out of the library are careless with serenity. Then you exit the building and so are instantly hit with the packages, whoops, and floods. You recall and repeat the librarian’s words: The infinite library is not the library. The infinite library is not the true library. The true library is human error, metonym, forgetting. The infinite library, which is outside the library, is not the library. The true library is incomplete.
Eugene Lim (@lim_eugene) is the author, most recently, of Dear Cyborgs, and works as a high school librarian.
This article is part of The Future of Work from the January issue. Subscribe now.
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