Emotions are something Jonathan Harris thinks everyone in the world has in common. We all like to share our feelings in one way or another, whether it's to a close friend, family member, or even anonymously on the internet- which is ultimately what this TED talk is about. Harris delves into the web's "secret stories", and tells us about his touching findings that truly show the common characteristic of emotions among us all.
Jonathan Harris starts of his talk by explaining how people in the world have what he refers to as "gaps"- there's ethnicity gaps, racial gaps, sexuality gaps, religious gaps, etc. This means we're all divided among these things and basically put into specific groups according to society. But, with all of these separate gaps in the world, Harris says there's one thing for sure we all have in common, which is sharing our emotions. So, in 2005 he created a website/organization called "We Feel Fine". We Feel Fine is a website that collects about 20,000 feelings per day from random places of the internet, and places them in these little circles that fly around of all different colors and sizes- brightly colored circles represent happy feelings, darker colored circles represent more sad or mad feelings. Larger circles represent larger sentences and smaller circles represent smaller sentences. You can click on any one of the circles to pull up the sentence and find the blog it was posted on, if you want to connect with the person who wrote it. Harris explains the different parts of the website, and how it collects information like where the post was located so it can find things like the weather forecast from that day. He ends his explanation with some of his favorite posts and pictures that he's seen, including things like "I feel lonely" and "I feel in love with Carolyn".
This TED talk was so fascinating to me because of how much work goes into the We Feel Fine website. They pull out so many different factors when picking the feelings, and organize them in a way that makes sense. Things like the weather can sort of affect a person's mood, for example if it's a rainy day the person will be more likely to be sad. I've always had an interest in human emotions and seeing how other people around me feel about certain situations, so I loved searching through the various blogs and posts and relating to the things people were saying. It was also sort of crazy to me the multitude of feelings that many people could be expressing at the same time, such as "slipping" or "responsible". lt was definitely an eye-opener for me to see the different feelings other than the basic sad and happy and mad.
Jonathan Harris created an incredible foundation that really went deeply into the web's emotional side and brought out the true, raw emotions of others. This TED talk made me really think about the power of the internet and how even though we have our differences, there's always one thing that we have in common- the power to share our feelings.