search for notability

yesterday, for the first time, I googled 'notability'. as expected, the first link was the Wikipedia page of the same name.

when it happened it got me thinking: might that not be a bit circular? doesn't Wikipedia use notability as its criterion for whether a page should exist? notability defined by some external measures or rules of thumb (otherwise the existence of an entity on Wikipedia could presumably never be challenged, as it would have become notable simply by being there).

so is Wikipedia, already, the most important statement of what notability actually is? the question also entails having a better idea of what it means to google something, and of the often highly symbiotic relationship between Google and Wikipedia. all that's definitely part of, though by no means all of, what I want to think about in this blog. because I see these two very different brands as immensely important for our future.

then something else happened. I thought: 'search for notability' is a fine name for my first blog, using the cool work of the good people at Posterous - all four of them, as they are constituted right now. I've been smart enough to wait until it was this simple, that's the way I like to think about it.

a day later, 'search for notability' has many intended meanings as a name - and probably many unintended ones. some of which I'll get to, I hope.