Happy 2010! It’s time to think about building the next generation of semantic dictionaries, much like rolling out next year’s models of automobiles from Detroit. We are not talking tail fins and rich Corinthian leather here, however. In the Age of the Web, any kind of dictionary will have a strictly limited life span.

Think of Susan Boyle, the Droid, and the Zhu Zhu hamster. You are not going to find any of these in a dictionary compiled just a year ago. And a year-old semantic dictionary would probably have few associations between Barack Obama and White House.

We have been at TextWise have been busy learning how to build new semantic dictionaries in a hurry and to make them better at the same time. With our statistical technology, we can now turn one out in about two weeks, including data collection time. Everyone will want them fresh and hot.