The Future of Dictionaries.

Torben asked the other day whether Visuwords or Wiktionary were the future of dictionaries. I tend to think more like Erin McKean. We still need professional lexicographers to act as the scientists describing the language, but we are poised on the brink of doing great new things with the available technology. Check out her talk from TED in March of this year:



If there were a Fantasy Lexicography league, Erin would be on my first string. She's Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford American Dictionary at a very young 36 years of age. Impressive. And she also blogs at dictionaryevangelist.com.

[Update: Something isn't working with the embedded video. You can watch the video at the TED site here.]