UNBOUND SYNONYM SOFTWARE

(The old web,Ĭonnected by the common synonym, is moved off to the side, where it is stillĮasily accessible.) Because the display is run by a Java applet, viewers canĬustomize the display of data: they can favor certain parts of speech,ĭetermine the extent to which synonyms of synonyms are displayed in theīackground, toggle between two- and three-dimensional representations of wordĪssociations, and more. Click on any one word at the periphery and it moves to theĬenter of the screen, where a new web of associations emerges. Typed into the Visual Thesaurus appears onscreen like a spider bobbing at theĬenter of a web of gently swaying gray filaments, each of which has at its endĪ synonym. The result is enchanting, if hard to describe: any word

UNBOUND SYNONYM SOFTWARE

Phrases into synonym sets) and Plumb Design's ThinkMap software (which itsĬreators describe as 'not primarily a data-visualization tool, but rather aĭata-animation tool'). WordNet (an online database that organizes some 50,000 words and 40,000 The Visual Thesaurus represents the marriage of Princeton University's Thesaurus recently produced by Plumb Design. ThereĪre signs that change is coming, however - among them a Visual Potential to help us reconceptualize language has barely been tapped. Standard feature in almost all word-processing programs, the computer's The tool currently best suited to the task, of course, is the computer, but even though a thesaurus is today a The problem, quite simply, is that books - necessarily linear and fixed in print - are not the proper medium for charting the multiple and unpredictable connections between words. The revolutionary idea of organizing vocabulary by meaning rather than by spelling proved to be enormously popular, but in practice Roget's Thesaurus and its offspring have all been unwieldy and difficult to work with.

Order.') But as the nineteenth-century London physician Peter Mark Roget realized, despite the very helpful existence of alphabetical dictionaries writers still never seem to stop 'painfully groping their way and struggling with the difficulties of composition.' To help rectify the situation, in 1852 Roget published his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. ('Theĭictionary,' Anatole France once observed, 'is the universe in alphabetical When it comes to organizing words, the alphabet today rules supreme. What questions are on our 'most complex and sophisticated minds'?Ī look back at our favorite sites of 1997. Investigating rumors of a vast conspiracy.Īn online exhibit surveys the impact of technology on late-twentieth-century art. Sometimes the Web can be its own best antidote. What do lost-pet ads, dentist-office ceilings, and in-flight recordings have in common? Competing visions of post-suburban life give new meaning to the 'global village.'

Unbound synonym