A Field Guide to Internet Emotion > 6.0 Extra-Sensory Emotion

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 someone writes you a text message, and then mysteriously disappears? Then this is the salon series for you!

#Feels 6.0 > Augment

The sixth session of the series is all about how technology augments emotions. Sensory experience triggers emotional experience. But as IRL moves more and more online, our feelings can seem less and less, well, real. Part of the reason our current online experience can feel flat is because it’s often missing the multi-modal, highly sensory nature of feeling. But that’s changing.

Gone are the days when you were limited to tripping out with your iTune visualizer or adding a Rumble Pak to your Nintendo 64. Now you can find calm by way of YouTube’s treasure trove of brain-tingling autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos or use a brainwave-headset to maintain calm during a yoga session. The next wave of visceral tech may go further to restore that mind-body connection. From gamers using biometrics to amp up their emotions to couples sending sensual feelings with remote BDSM devices to musicians using haptic gloves to feel the music, we’ll debate whether technology will expand our emotional world or just mess it up!

Pre-Salon Prep

Please read or watch the following, before the session:

• Watch Neil Harbisson’s TED talk I Listen to Color
• Read How Technology Will Screw Up Our Senses in The Daily Beast
• Read Could We Hack Our Brains to Get New Senses in Futurism
• Read Beyond the 5 Senses by Matthew Hutson in The Atlantic

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