Thursday, October 27, 2005

The Google Zeitgeist

Check it out.

If the Dow Jones and the S&P500 are indices of the stock market, than the Google Zeitgeist is supposedly an index of our culture. It's a collection of the most popular search queries in a given time period, and potentially, a given concern or obsession of our time. Want to know if something is a fad? Then look for "Survivor" or "American Idol" in the Declining Queries list. Look for "World Trade Center" and "Osama bin Laden" after 9/11, and for fun, look for "Nostradamus" around Y2K. Interesting, no?

BTW, Zeitgeist means: the spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation -- at least according to dictionary.com. It comes from the German words Zeit (time) and Geist (spirit), like Poltergeist. :-)


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http://www.drew.edu/english/prizes-and-awards

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