Living in a world where the machine and the Internet are ubiquitous, many people work and play online, in a world that is, ironically, often isolated and lonesome. While the Internet, as intended, connects us to information, products and services, it often draws us away from the rich connections that are created through interpersonal communication. The goal of this dissertation is to use the machine to connect people. Not to information, products or services, but to each other. I propose to use the machine, the very machine that pulls us apart, to bring us together, connecting people through stories. People tell stories as a way to be less lonesome, reaching out to people that they can relate to. The three systems that I describe in this dissertation are intended to facilitate and amplify connections between people through stories. Buzz is a digital theater installation that autonomously finds and exposes the most emotional stories from the millions of blog postings on the Web, bringing the stories to life with a cast of virtual actors using speech synthesis. Wrigley Buzz is a variant of Buzz that seeks out stories about brands and products, connecting companies to consumers via stories about experiences with and opinions towards their products. Finally, News at Seven is an automatically generated news show that, in addition to giving the news, automatically finds and presents different points of view, connecting people through stories and opinions about current events expressed in the blogosphere. These three systems serve the goal using the machine to connect people, not to information or products, but to each other.

Last modified

• 08/27/2018

Creator

• Sara Hodges Owsley

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N20T62

Subject

• Computer Science

Keyword

• Computer Science

Date created

• 2007-11-07

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright