Memex in the Mirror : Using Social Media to Visualize Collective Thought in Real-time

The paper discusses the ‘What We Think About When We Think About…” project which uses real-time searches of large data sets produced by social media systems to permit the visualization of collective thought in real-time. It begins by briefly exploring the relationship between technology and those who make and use it and suggests that digital technology affects the ways modern humans think, thought-patterns which the examination of social media data can reveal. The operation of the project software is examined in some detail and two areas of application in augmented and virtual realities are discussed.