Google Visualizes Words & Culture

in Google, History, Literature | December 16th, 2010 2 Comments

Since 2004, Google has digitized more than 15 million books, mostly to build its?Google Books service. But?yesterday Google Labs released a nice little spinoff product, the Ngram Viewer, that provides a window into?how we have historically used words, and what these usages say about our culture.

This new visualization tool lets you map out the usage of a given word, or series of words, over a 200 year period (1800 – 2008). For example, the Ngram Viewer shows us that we think less about ?“war” these days, as compared to?the 1940s and 1960s, and more about “terrorism.” (Click the links to “war” and “terrorism” and you will see what I mean.) Similarly, the English speaking world has recently renewed its love affair with the dog vis-a-vis cats. And if you invested in salsa and bailed on ketchup in 1980, you would be a pretty wealthy person right now.

Overall, the Ngram database contains roughly?5.2 million books (a subset of the larger Google Books database), with?some 500 billion words, and it?features texts in Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. Get more details here.

via @webacion and @eugenephoto

Related Content:

Introducing the New Google eBookstore (with Free Classics)

Share:

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured site: So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?.

View the original article here