A BURGLAR IN THE TREASURE HOUSE
Plumb Design's "Visual Thesaurus"
by Robbin Murphy

http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus

Thesaurus means "treasure house" in Latin and so it seems apt that the
origins of this writer's tool lie some two hundred years ago in the
prison cell of an Englishman named Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869). This
conjures up an intriguing image of an unlucky burglar/writer patiently
plotting his heist, casing the joint for when he breaks out of his jail
(writer's) block unknowing that he is, like all of us, a prisoner of
language and can never escape.

The truth however, is that Roget – a quiet and honest student – was
unfairly thrown into prison for a year for political reasons. To pass
the time and to keep his wits he turned his philosophically-inclined
mind to constructing a list of one thousand terms to use as a
"repertory" of words embodying ideas. After his release he went on to
become a successful physician and scholar and continued to add words and
phrases to his list throughout his long life.

In 1852 after he'd retired, Roget published this list as the first
Roget's Thesaurus and it was an immediate bestseller – not with
philosophers as he'd intended, but with writers who immediately used it
to enhance their writing skills. To this day there are not only the
descendents of the original work but myriad printed texts using the
generic term "thesaurus" published by others as well as electronic
version included in major word publishing applications.

Many writers probably feel a certain sense of guilt at first when they
reach for the thesaurus on their desk, or click on the item under the
HELP menu on their computer, as if admitting to a failure to have the
entirety of their language at their immediate disposal. But its
usefulness soon puts that to rest as the depth and richness of their
writing increases – or appears to. What these books can't do, and what
Roget intended, is give us a picture of the way words are intricately
linked in a web of meaning very much in the way our minds work by
association.

As it happens, Roget was also the discoverer of the theory of
"persistence of vision," the fact that images remain on the retina a
split second after the source is removed from the visual field. This
became the basis for, at first, children's toys like flip-books and
magic lantern projections, and later, of course, motion pictures.

So it is very appropriate that Plumb Design should use the concept of a
thesaurus to demonstrate the flexibility of their Thinkmap software.
Linked to the WordNet database created by the Cognitive Science
Laboratory at Princeton University this java-based program creates
"Maplets" that enables users to visualize verbal associations of meaning
by creating 3-d animated clusters of words connected by fine lines.
Instead of a list of alternatives you see subtle variations with the
most appropriate choices the brightest. As you move through the network
words realign and intensify or fade away but they don't immediately
disappear. There is that "persistence of vision" worked into it. While a
word may no longer be the best choice based on the point of view it is
still there, in the distance as a reminder of the complexity of
language.

The WordNet database from which the Visual Thesaurus draws is a
dictionary based on psycholinguistic theories (used for artificial
intelligence research) containing over 50,000 words and 40,000 phrases
arranged into over 70,000 sense meanings and is freely available from
Princeton University. Plumb Design has a copy of it on their server for
Web access and a standalone version is in the works that will work with
Microsoft Word.

Visual Thesaurus is probably not the productivity-enhancing tool for
those who want their information quickly – users are too tempted to
spend time in its game-like environment creating poetical word
associations – but it is both wonderful in that it attracts and
delights, and resonant because it is a natural learning environment.

The Thinkmap software that is the engine for Visual Thesaurus is a
powerful, flexible and responsive tool for displaying any type of
complex information by turning the data into animated displays that
encourage interaction. Thinkmap is also behind the Smithsonian
Institution's Revealing Things on-line exhibit where visitors navigate
the exhibit at their own pace and in their own direction depending on
their interests but guided by rules defined by the curator. It allows
for exploration and interesting juxtaposition of objects without leaving
the visitor lost.

Raw data can be beautiful in it's own way, though it isn't very useful
without some kind of organization and interface design. That is why we
create data filters. Sometimes on-line it's left in semi-raw form as
lists to scroll down our screens or else it's tarted up with some basic
HTML and, if we're lucky, hyperlinks. Rarely is it presented in a manner
we enjoy interacting with much less where we gain deeper meaning as it
is here.

Mark Tinkler, who is Plumb's Design Chief Technology Officer and
Creative Director and studied architecture and computer science at
Carnegie Mellon University, is behind both the Thesaurus and Thinkmap
(the latter developed when he was the chief technologist at Razorfish).
At 24 he may be a sign of the future – that much-anticipated breed of
artist/programmer who instinctively combines aesthetic concerns with
object-oriented code and a perfect collaborator as we break into the
treasure house of language.

OTHER URLs

Thinkmap
http://www.thinkmap.com/

WordNet
http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/

Smithsonian Institution
"Revealing Things"
http://www.si.edu/revealingthings/

Razorfish
http://www.razorfish.com

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