Sure, we’re close to the end of the printed dictionary, for it is perhaps the ultimate printed matter for digital replacement.
Now what if we replace the words with images?
Welcome to Google book a project by Ben West & Felix Heyes. In Google book, West and Hayes provide a visual rendering of the Google-first mentality that currently permeates and dominates our culture’s search for information.
Here’s what they did :
They took the 21,000 words that were in the dictionary they chose and entered each word into Google. The first image that was returned became the visual equivalent.
The resulting PDF was then printed and hand-bound into marbled paper-covered boards.
“It’s really an unfiltered, uncritical record of the state of human culture in 2012,” says Ben West. And so what is the state ‘human culture’? “I would estimate about half of the book is revolting medical photos, porn, racism or bad cartoons” said West.
Thankfully, there is talk of a forthcoming softcover edition.
piece at Creative Applications Network, Google – The first Google image for every word in the dictionary