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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Trend: Making information interactive


I continue to be amazed by all the really interesting applications of creativity making information more engaging, accessible and interactive. This application (via infosthetics.com) allows you to visually identify word patterns and themes in presidential State of the Union addresses going all the way back to Washington. A really fascinating journey through time (and cultural spin). Take a look at themes around crises periods across time and see how the language changes. Perhaps we can take lessons in leadership and persuasion from more successful presidents in that they clearly changed the language and tenor of the national debate of their day. This stuff almost makes me want to go back to college just for the pleasure of it.

4 comments:

Seth said...

did a historical double-word search of "you" and "they". back in washington and lincoln's day it was just about even use, if not "they" favored. however, reagan, clinton and bush have tipped the scale back (+6 "you's" on avg. to +11 in bush's feb state of the union). guess this level of personal responsibility, control and empowerment isn't new...

"ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

Anonymous said...

Many overlapping words, yet only one use of "nu-cular."

Mnels said...

I was most fascinated by John Tyler's use of the word "It's" 52 times in 1842. This was way before Monty Python even.

Anonymous said...

Greets to the webmaster of this wonderful site. Keep working. Thank you.
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