Ms Fnd in a Lbry
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MS Fnd in a Lbry (probably intended to be spelled out "Manuscript Found in a Library") is a satirical science fiction short story about the information age by Hal Draper written in 1961.
[edit] Plot
The story is in the form of a report written by an anthropologist from an alien civilization who investigates the remains of our civilization several billion years into the future. It turns out that mankind's fall was brought about by information overload, inability to catalogue and retrieve knowledge properly.
The title of the short story comes from the fact that all redundancy has been removed from our language in order for the information volume to shrink. Finally the sum of all human knowledge (which was sort of finite) was stored away in a drawer-sized box by means of subatomic processes. However the access to that information required complicated indices, bibliographies etc., which soon outgrew the size of all knowledge.
The use of indices grows exponentially, comprising a pseudo-city, pseudo-planet and eventually a pseudo-galaxy of information storage. At this point, a case of circular reference is encountered, and the civilization needs to refer to the first drawer-sized box to find the error. However, this drawer has been lost in the pseudo-galaxy, and soon all of our civilization falls apart while trying to locate the first drawer.
It turns out that the anthropologist's civilization is actually heading down the same path. Presumably, the report was given the name "MS Fnd in a Lbry" after the fall of the anthropologist's civilization by another anthropologist from another alien civilization that is also heading down the same path.
[edit] References
This story first appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1961.
