Year End: On worldbuilding

The internet is an amazing space when it reminds us how vast and diverse the world is. Early dot-com websites reflected this notion of an “expanding space” in their company names, using words like “earth,” “globe,” “world,” “space,” or “system” to describe their growing networks. Our website contains the word “world” 950 times. In comparison, our galaxy contains 100+ billion planets and scientists believe that around 40 billion of these are earth like.

The word “world” is mentioned 956 out of 755802 total words in the TCI-verse.

On the eve of a new year, it may be important to check some numbers in order to reflect on what binds us together in this world. As musician Madalyn Merkey puts it, “I keep it very theoretical, like I just need to get my numbers right before I indulge in the environment that I’m creating”.

It’s a fact that programs love to count. Just like counting the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on a beach, let’s iterate through our microcosm, one word at a time. We could count how many times green [40] or blue [62] is mentioned across our website. Below is a tally of how many instances a particular worldbuilding word is mentioned throughout our 314 interviews. We will update this list on occasion with a current count and will leave a timestamp at the bottom for reference.

galaxy [1]

universe [34]

world [950]

earth [44]

globe [3]

water [129]

plant [62]

animal [69]

human [210]

system [168]

love [1074]

hate [570]