Of mirrors, encyclopedias, and the virtual

Abstract

The statement “The world will be Tlön ” significantly points to the future. Tlön occupies a state of perpetual potential that slips through the grasp of the real, yet cannot be confined to the imaginal. The Argentinean author leads us past the “abominable” mirror into an exploration of virtuality, in its multifarious senses. Tlön not only offers a predigital age analogy for this state of virtuality but , more importantly , opens up inquiry into those aspects of the contemporary milieu that are influenced by it. This brings to focus the uses of the term “ virtual”, not only as a cy-Borgesian prefiguration but also as an elaboration on the implications of the term. No discussion of the virtual can be complete without a consideration of its most popular exemplar: Cyberspace. Like Tlön in Borges’ fiction, the genesis of cyberspace as we know it today can be traced to the literary fiction that imagined it. In many ways the notion of cyberspace, like that of Tlön, attracted the public imagination to such a degree that efforts by parties other than the initial creators precipitated the fictional concept into actuality. The terms virtual and cyberspace find their most telling expression instantiated in online virtual worlds, particularly Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). This paper will explore how these three complected artefacts of digital culture are pre figured by the figure of Tlön and more importantly consider what insights Borges lends to the subjects at hand while signalling the instances where these virtualities go beyond the Borgesian vision.