This is the text version of our launch at the PicNic Festival in Amsterdam.

We also put the slides online, as well as a video from the presentation.

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In the next couple of minutes I would like to share with you
two observations and one announcement.

The first observation has to do with happiness.
Because: what is happiness?

Albert Schweitzer thought he had a clear definition, when he said that happiness is nothing more but good health and bad memory.

And as compelling as that may sound, it turns out Mr. Schweitzer knew a lot about medicine and about winning Nobel prizes, but he didn’t know an awful lot about happiness research.

Because in the last fifty years, research has shown that the biggest
influence for your personal happiness is NOT being in good health
Neither is winning the lottery.

It’s not about having power, or living in a good neighbourhood,
and it’s not about getting your nose pierced.

What makes the difference in peoples lifes, is the social factor.
Do you easily make contact, are you out going?
Do you have friends who you can call?

We are a social species and we need to interact in order to feel alive.

My second observation is about internet usage.
All around the world, people are spending more and more of their time on-line.

This shouldn’t come to you as a surprise because
we -in this room- have all played our part in
making the internet a place worth while.

We sing, we argue, we laugh and we talk.
We dream, we love and we turn strangers into good friends.

The same things our ancestors did by their campfires.
Except, we don’t live in the age of Kumbaya anymore.

Technology has broken down the walls of place and time,
making it possible to interact, anyplace and anytime.

In this light, I like to state that the internet
has become our global campfire.

Shaping our minds and driving social interaction.

Now, what happens if we combine these two observations?
We are a social species
and need to interact to feel happy
and because it’s lack of boundaries
the internet has become a popular place to do this.

Does this mean that being online, actually makes you feel happier?

In other words… do all these bits and bytes create a thing called virtual happiness?

This is the hypothesis of the Virtual Happiness Project. I’m proud to announce that today this project has started with a global survey.

Later on two experiments will follow. Because we know that happiness is measurable, and I think these are important issues that need to be addressed.

And… if there is a correlation between being online and happiness,
how is this related to things like:

• information stress
• friendship inflation
• or continiuous partial attention… a topic that Linda Stone has so elequently talked about on this very conference.

Many questions to answer.. and a lot of work to be done. We hope to have our results in February 2009.
And in the mean time I would like to invite you to participate in our survey on www.virtualhappiness.org.

I wish you a happy conference.

And would like to thank you for your attention!