jorge luis borges

For my final project, I chose to write a short story.  read more »

Borges has been one of my favorite short story writers since I first read "The House of Asterion" back at the start of ninth grade. His stories are always beautiful and strange; "The Aleph" is no exception. While it has no immediate connection to virtual reality, it does question the nature of reality, especially the way in which we experience reality. Our experience shapes what we perceive, not only in obvious ways like bias or phobias, but in less obvious ways like the way we can find faces in abstract shapes (pareidolia). "The Aleph" presents us with the concept of a thing which allows us to experience reality in a drastically new way. The narrator may see far more than he tells us--in fact, from the description, he probably does--but the things he chooses to focus on and the way he describes them shape the story. Similarly, the created virtual realities we conceptualize or deal with in our lives are focused to certain ends by our goals or our very nature.  read more »

****vaguely spoilery****
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