RSSThe Garden of Forking Paths: Fork 2
Feb 08
Uncategorized borges, farden of gorking paths, flickr ate my blog, magic fly, sticks and stone Comments Off
After spending hours this week searching for hypertext versions of this story, I am beginning to feel a bit discouraged. I have quickly come to realize that a gajillion people out there have taken inspiration from, written critical discourse on, and quoted from Borges’ story.
And broken links abound.
One dead end was more interesting than all the rest. That is that Stuart Moulthrop, a professor at UB, created his own hypertext version of GFP, called “Forking Paths.” I was quite disappointed to discover, however, that it is not available anywhere online. It is only available through something called New Media Reader, which one can purchase for $45 if one is so inclined. I am not, sadly.
Another interesting and seemingly dead end is this website, which pulls up simply a picture of a labyrinth, nothing more (at least so far as I can tell).
This website seemed promising, but if there was an ability to navigate from the main page, I couldn’t figure it out.
And what I started to realize as time slipped by, was that the internet itself is a garden of forking paths. Presumable, we students all started out from the same (or a very similar) place, and have wandered through the garden, all winding up in different places. This action, more than anything, seems to me to embody the story.
Sticks, flowers, and rocks I’ve found on my wanderings through the garden:
Eastgate (publisher of hypertext works)
Conceptual art inspired by GFP
Tekkalogue, a chronicle of innovative new media