Part one is a Python script that generates a random call number from the Library of Congress call number classification. It then searches and scrapes catalog2.loc.gov to find any listings under the chosen call number, and prints the title of the listing, if it exists. The vast majority of call numbers do not correspond to listings, and in these cases only the call number is printed.

This project takes as its underlying ideology the tradition of 'pataphysics, which assumes only the general universality of exceptions and therefore that all conceptions of the universe are equally invalid.

Accordingly, in place of doing statistical analyses on scraped data (statistics representing, perhaps, the antithesis of 'pataphysics), thecurrentstateofknowledge takes as its subject the only thing that we can know – the present. Fortunately, the existence of both network and neural latency suggests that by the time the user processes what is known it is no longer known, thereby rendering this project useless.

Part two is a Chrome extension that passively monitors users’ web browsing activities, taking special note of their Google searches. Should one of these searches return zero results, the query is added to an online record. The resulting document serves as both poem and catalog, and in hosting the list on the web, State of Knowledge ensures that future searches for the same queries will have somewhere to point, and as such the document is in some sense self-destructive.