Something interesting is happening right now. Millions of people are expressing their emotions online. Through email, through their Facebook status, through their blog, through a text message. Never before has this amount of touchy-feely discussion been placed in the open. What would the Victorians think of all this public soul-baring?

As everyone is networked to the hilt and all of our feelings are buzzing around the world at the speed of light, or in my case at the speed of Rogers HighSpeed Lite, the idea of a global consciousness doesn’t seem so far-fetched after all. Empathy could be the one trait emphasized online that is otherwise rare in our real lives. An online acquaintance who just got dumped is represented in a nice tidy little text box or status change online; in real life she may be a mess of tears, snot-filled tissue, and incoherent moaning. We’ve created a world where the messiest side of ourselves, emotion, is nice and clean and above all else approachable.

Because of this rather strange approachability online, we, who typically don’t want to get involved, do. We are more aware of the state of our friends and are quick to electronically comfort them through a quick Facebook message if they are down or offer advice to buck up and carry on and so forth.

I found something amazing the other day online that crawls blogs, takes emotion-based words and visually represents them on screen. Click the visual bouncing ball and you see the blog posting behind the emotion. Amazing.

Title: We Feel Fine

Mission: To explore human emotion on a global scale

Medium: Processing and Flash

Visualizing the emotions that are represented online brings about the idea of the online realm as a global consciousness where all the emotions and issues that we typically don’t show in real life bubble to the surface and are openly discussed. With our subconscious thoughts and emotions being expressed online how can we ignore the fact that there is an online human consciousness, not in the Terminator or Matrix way, but as a live canvas or soup that can represent the holistic total of millions of people’s hearts and minds.

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Posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 3:38 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.