Jonathan Harris has launched his new project, The Whale Hunt.

I love Jonathan’s work, particularly We Feel Fine, a website I believe to be not only a digital art masterpiece, but also one of the most complex and sophisticated prediction applications in existence. Most people don’t understand why when I initially explain so I thought I would explain via a blog musing. Although Jonathan never intends for the his site to be used as I will propose, I think the future possibilities for such technology are simultaneously frightening and exhilarating.

Before reading further, I highly suggest playing with We Feel Fine and also listening to Jonathan’s Ted Talk where he explains his creation and its intended uses.

Facts: digital, non-verbal communications are growing exponentially (from Twitter to Facebook status updates to blog posts). In addition, people are embracing these forms of communication in droves and also becoming increasingly comfortable with exposing themselves in an unprotected and unrestricted manner. Search engines continue to index all these digital interactions, mining both data and emotions.

Consider this scenario. A government uses a more sophisticated platform than We Feel Fine to harvest and data mine the emotional reaction of key demographics and regional populations to events such as terrorist attacks and/or political campaigns. Then using regression analysis to analyze the emotional state of said populations pre and post event, we have the data to create uber predictive models. These emotional models could then be used to strategically plan initial air strikes during a war, or to spin political announcements during particularly opportune times.

Scary and real all at the same time. I think there is much more to We Feel Fine than appears on the surface, hidden beneath its amazing flash and brilliant design. The question is who else sees the same thing?

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