We Feel Fine is a brilliant project by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar. It is an attempt to map out how the blogosphere “feels”. This program tracks all of the times that anyone blogs the word feel, feels, or feeling. It then collects the words around it to discern the “feeling”. Using various and visually stunning techniques this website shares this vast and growing data set. We Feel Fine allows the user to simultaneously see trends and to connect to individual blogs entries. You can be searching for a certain feeling, by gender, in a certain location, posted at a during a certain weather (this last one is mind numbing). Or you might just want to know who else is feeling morose,content, or gleeful ( I think that is where I am right now). If is worth checking out Jonathan Harris’s talk about this project on TED.
So, I got your attention, but you ask yourself, why am I blogging about this? I feel (just could not resist) that the technology that they have created for We Feel Fine would be an amazing way of doing an honest assessment of how the blogosphere “feels” about Israel. If the right people reached out to Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, I am sure that they could set up a computer to collect every time someone blogged Israel, Zion, Zionism, Zionist, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. It then could collect the words around it to discern the “feeling” about Israel. Using similar various and visually stunning techniques this website could shares this vast and growing data set.
So who should undertake this project? I really do not know or care. It could be AIPAC, J Street, Makom, Camera, the David Project, AJC, or anyone. This kind of project would just reflect how people feel about Israel. It can only represents data, it does not spin it. Who knows maybe they could all work together on this? But, still, are you curious? How would you feel looking into this virtual looking glass? What do you think we will see?
Said to Myself 
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