How is the world feeling or reports worldwide in the past few hours?
Jonathan Harris gives a talk about Visual Observations of the Web at TED Talks and describes them as “Passive Observations.”
The We Feel Fine Project scans the world’s blogs to collect snapshots and blurbs of writers’ feelings. Diameters of dots are correlated to the length of feelings. Some dots revels snapshots submitted with this “passive observation” of feelings. You can manipulate the metrics to reveal the amount of similar thoughts of a particular location, gender, and even weather.
The Universe Project turns current events into constellations of words and pictures. News items instead of feeling are visually observed.
Both sites explain that we possess a deep need to express ourselves and that we have much more in common that we choose to believe we do.