James A. Little Theater
Community Event
US Mountain Time
Jean-Baptiste Michel Postdoctoral Fellow, Psychology, Harvard University
Culturomics – the quantitative study of cultural trends through the analysis of digitized texts – is allowing scientists unprecedented insights into the evolution of human behavior and thought. Erez Lieberman-Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel have constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing four percent of all books ever printed in English. Their analysis of linguistic and cultural phenomena from 1800 to 2000 touches on grammar, collective memory, technological progress, fame, censorship, and epidemiology – and clarifies much about our ancestors and ourselves.
SFI Host:
Ginger Richardson