The system provides a method and apparatus for sorting and displaying collections of communications. These communications can be a single type or multiple types of data and may come from email systems, bulletin boards, text messages, Facebook and Twitter postings and comments, financial transactions, travel itineraries or any other type of communications. The communications represented by the system can be electronic or physical as desired. The system can also present forwarded, copied, replied, or other types of communications. In one embodiment, the system provides a Universe View of a set of communications. The Universe View, in one embodiment, is a three dimensional representation of a plurality of cubes. Each cube represents a subset of a collection of communications. Each cube can be color coded or shaded to represent a dominant theme of the contents of the communications represented by the cube.