The Project with the title "Take some Soma! The Happy Browser" was created in the
university course Wicked Problems and Speculative Software by Prof. Boris Müller.
Task and Idea
The goal of this project was to visualize a so-called Wicked Problem, i.e. an unsolvable and tricky problem, in the context of a software. Inspired by the book Brave New World, I created an extreme counterpart to doomscrolling. The result is a browser that displays only positive to trivial content, everything bad and uncomfortable is hidden. From the beginning of this course it was clear that, aside from the interactive prototype itself, we should document our project in a video.
The Wicked Problem
At the beginning of the course, I mainly dealt with the wicked problem of the loss and acquisition of knowledge. This can be defined as a wicked problem mainly because the same cycle can be found throughout human history:
1. Humans acquire new knowledge.
2. This knowledge is collected, documented and archived.
3. A catastrophe (man-made or natural), wars, technical errors, etc. destroy the knowledge.
4. Man begins anew.
After some initial design concepts, I took a new approach inspired by the book Brave New World. This book describes a satirical, dystopian future in which there are no more problems and no more negative news. However, if you do feel a little depressed, the freely available drug Soma is available to everyone. I wanted to transfer this theme to my project by using the software as a counterpart to so-called doomscrolling and offering gleefreshing as another extreme.
Final Prototype
For the implementation, I decided to design a browser that only displays positive content. No exceptions are made for negative search queries, which is why it was important for me to include an example. This involves searching for possible consequences of the climate crisis, which are, however, shown as purely positive aspects in the results. In addition to the general search, there is also an area that is reminiscent of a social network, in this case the Soma Club, which is based on Twitter. Here, users can network and exchange ideas, but not express themselves completely as they wish. Soma also applies here. If the wording of your own content sounds too negative or critical, the content is automatically reworded. The meaning remains the same, but the wording is rendered in a friendlier and less negative way.
In case that users try to break out of the strictly regulated framework, e.g. by searching for links directly, very rough censorship is still carried out. Visual extremes are deliberately used, such as black censorship bars. Soma makes it possible to remove these bars with a great deal of effort, but even then tries to pave the way back to its own results.