My brother just launched a new personal project of his, consisting of two web sites; ifeellondon.com and ifeelnyc.com. The idea, in a nutshell, is that you browse for activities in your home city by how you feel, rather than what you might want to do, or where you might want to go.

It’s an interesting idea, because most searching on the web is done in a pragmatic way, and is almost always based very literally on words. Have you ever found yourself in that annoying situation where you want to search for something, but you can’t find the words to enter into the search engine? Maybe the topic requires too many words, or is beyond words. Perhaps you have an image in your head, but no way to extract it, and no way to tell Google what it is you want.

Ironically, the “search by feeling” in this embryonic form winds up being a somewhat semantic process anyway. It is ultimately a folksonomy, but one with a very specific agenda. Regardless, it does point to a whole different way of searching the web, and possibly more to the point, a whole different way to index content. Of course we can only work within the constraints of contemporary technology. Imagine if content could be indexed by chemical signals or brain activity, rather than mere words. Your computer could sense your needs and give you what you’re looking for.