According to a new paper in Science by Michel and Aiden, we are on the dawn of a new form of study, Cuturnomics, enabled by the Google Books. A research team analyzed the language in the millions of books now digitized and yes, searchable. Among the many interesting findings (other than you can make up a word for a field and have it passed along in record time) are:
- The English language is growing by more than 8500 words per annum
- The majority of words in the lexicon are undocumented in standard reference materials
- The half life of the past is decreasing – we reference the past much less much faster than before
- Media stars become famous faster and obsolete quicker (phew!)
- Freud is more frequently referenced in our world than Darwin, Einstein or Galileo…but probably not as much as Lady Gaga this year…..(I made that last bit up)
Fascinating stuff really, and further proof that digital tools give us access (and thereby potential analysis) of text corpora that could simply not be analyzed by previous researchers. Culturomics indeed (wouldn’t culturnomics be better?) .More at: http://www.culturomics.org/