I’m pretty sure there was something anomalous going on with your initial search, Michael. Monadology.net went between being the #1 result for “monadology” (about which I felt rather guilty) to #3 during the first year of its existence, then started to fall as pages like Wikipedia’s article supplanted it. As you point out, this seemed only just. Now it’s been hanging around between #5 and #7, which seems fine to me.

In terms of search engines, the thing that weirds me out is that the highest keyword search that sends people here continues to be “Tupac” yet I can’t find this site anywhere in the hundreds of pages listed for that search.

Hmm. Either I don’t know how to use Google or else you’re right and something weird was going on that day. Now this post seems pretty superfluous. Except I got to say “cybermonads.”

And that, my friend, will quickly be worth it. There are only two Google results for cybermonads!

I’m also rather fond of the phrase “Monadological Intensification”. Even if it sounds rather… sexual.

Is this what blogger navel gazing looks like? Interesting.

It’s also fascinating to me how google has become a kind of acid test for confirming the existence of things, and for seeing how much being-ness they in fact possess. As a desk-jockey who primarily does internet research for my daily bread, goole plays a major role in my work (along with numerous other proprietary databases and search engines), and more and more I find myself using it in my non-work-related research. But speaking of work-related research, I think I hear it calling…

Made it!

Poor Mike, you actually have to use your computer for accomplishing real work!

Seriously though, Mr Esterheld, it does rather seem that Google rankings reveal how much being-ness something has, not in reality, but in virtualand. In reality the little bits of on and off that encodify the data that make up a webpage are just sitting in a box somewhere, anywhere. It’s the relationship the segment of information has with all the other pages out there that give it its weight and importance in the almost-angelic texture of intellectual potentiality that makes up the web. Simply sitting on a hard drive, it seems to me, the information is in some real way more purely potential and less actual than when it’s instantly accessible from a myriad of links nestled in pages anchored in other drives sitting in other boxes all over the world.

I think all of you are underestimating the power of google: It can solve complicated metaphysical problems as well. I asked it if being was univocal and it said yes (of course, Jeeves said it was analogical)

Dear Mr. Sullivan,

I heard that! You know, I have real work to do, and my laptop has baby puke in the keyboard…Maybe I’ll just take your beautiful machine (which I have bought for you twice, since you lost the first one!), and you can use the other one for your “not real work!” Punk.

Sincerely yours,

Mrs. Sullivan

I believe he also lost a hilarious christmass present from his best friend as well. ah well, if only we all had as much free time as Mr. Sullivan.

*in cybermonad voice*
I am cybermonad adrian, monadology.net is soooo cool!

Ha ha ha, now there are Three cybermonad hits! Ha ha ha!