Thursday, March 28, 2013

un-findable

There is a certain truculence to the fact that the more anyone knows, the more what is unknown asserts a livelihood.

Sweden had considered adding "ungoogleable" ("ogooglebar") to its annual list of new Swedish words until Internet search-engine Google balked at the notion that the word would be defined as something that cannot be found on any search engine. Google wanted the word to refer only to its own abilities or inabilities. Sweden backed off, fearing a long legal wrangle.

The very word "ungoogleable" throws into question the stated and unstated assumptions about the Internet. Is there really something you can't find? And if you found out you couldn't find it, would that mean that something was therefore un-findable or that you had found something unfind-able and thereby, in one sense, found it ... and created a dazzling oxymoron?

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