Google's new book search tool comes with the ability to make charts out of searches through the 500 billion words that make up 5.2 million catalogued books. Here's what ReadWriteWeb used it to find. Here's what I looked at - changing religious values (especially the decline of God and the fall of heaven vs hell); cars overtaking horses; vampires beating zombies; political shifts at the middle and end of the century; and finally, my favourite chart last, perhaps offering some hope that mumbo-jumbo has not yet conquered the world.
Update: back to RWW's "changing media types" chart - "Internet" comes out as the most-mentioned medium by about 1998 if you capitalise it (the search is case-sensitive), and while adding up both "TV" and "television" probably puts them ahead it's so usual to capitalise "the Internet" in books that I think really it's way out in front now.
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