A Field Guide to Internet Emotion > 1.0 All the Feels

Tech emotionographer Pamela Pavliscak hosts an 8-month Interintellect Salon series while writing her new book #Feels: How Technology is Changing Our Emotional Life for the Better. 

Have you ever wondered why we feel compelled to note and name every new variation of sadness online? Or what you call that emotional hangover you can get after scrolling social media? Or how to explain that little leap of anxiety when the 3 dots appear as some writes you a text message, and then mysteriously disappear? Then this is the salon series for you!

Buy a ticket for the whole series here: A Field Guide to Internet Emotion

#Feels 1.0 > All the Feels

The first session is where we’ll commiserate on how technology impacts our mood, shapes our emotional expression, brings us together or drives us apart.

Add emotion to the internet and the feeling usually seems to come out negative. Social media is making us angrier, that the drive to express ourselves is stirring up narcissism, that all the attention we lavish on our phones is making us lonelier than ever. 

Then factor in the next wave of tech that promises (or threatens) to read our emotions and the feeling is even more dire. Will we smile for the camera to pay for our lunch? Or perhaps meditation will become a way to regulate our heart rate so as not to seem too anxious? And the big question—will we see an 80s-style new-wave makeup revival to hide our expressions from surveillance? 😱

Counterpoint: What if technology is changing our emotional life for the better by giving us new awareness of emotion, more varied ways or expression, and a deeper sense of empathy. Let’s discuss!

Consider this gathering an intro to all the ways technology crosses paths with emotion. We’ll start out with the many, many theories of emotions and how they come into play in our platforms from texting to social media to wellness apps and more. Then, a brief background about the new emotion-reading tech coming along before we share stories of our own highs and lows with technology, untangle our complicated new emotions, and think about the future of feeling together.

Pre-Salon Prep

Could you, would you please take a few minutes to share a few feelings about technology and emotion? Have a quick chat with Feelbot!

If you’d like some background, try the following:

• Skim the entry on theories of emotion in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Read or watch the Aspen Ideas Festival debate, Emotions and Tech: What Happens When We Encode Our Inner Lives
• Watch this TED-Ed, Are There Universal Expressions of Emotion? or read Hard Feelings: Science’s Struggle to Define Emotions by Julie Beck in The Atlantic
• Watch Laurence Scott on BBC Ideas, Is Social Media Messing With Our Emotions?

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