Visualising the world's feelings online

CALIFORNIA:Artist and anthropologist Jonathan Harris builds tools that allow people to see their similarities.

Troubled by the various gaps that we use to define ourselves - education gaps, religious gaps, a gender gap - Harris has created a software visualisation system to show us our similarities. The deliberately counterintuitive aspect of Harris' work is typical of TED, a website that collects and distributes ideas that stem from technology, entertainment and design work and which carries a video of Harris film We Feel Fine.

The result in the case of human emotions, as mapped and visualised by Harris, is an entertaining insight into how the world feels. The result of the TED database is an unusual resource of innovation-related videos as well as easy access to innovative minds across the world.

According to Harris one thing we have in common is a need to express ourselves and as more people write down their thoughts on the internet we now have access, theoretically, to a wealth of human emotion. Harris scans the blogosphere for the phrases "I feel" or "I am feeling", grabs the sentence around those phrases, and accumulates 20,000 feelings a day.

To visualise 20,000 feelings Harris sees brights colours for happy positive feelings are brightly coloured dark colours for less happy. The result is a constantly moving account of people's feelings each day.

Though an apparently trivial application of web-data visualisation, it is indicative of the innovative strands of thought emerging from the cross-fertilisation of technology, media and design.

If you are looking for insights into what that crossroads means for business, you can wander across the virtual earth with Microsoft's Stephen Lawler who talks about the significance of the three-dimensional internet.

Biologist Janine Benyus' illustration of how humans mimic nature in many of their designs opens up the possibility of a more conscious approach to design - biomimicry - which is already informing architects and industrial designers.

TED is owned by the California based Sapling Foundation which also works with the Clinton Global Initiative. For more go to www.ted.com