Reddit serves as a global attention monitor.
The website is a democratic, and objective crowdsourcing news website. "The home page of the internet" is their slogan and while the content is slightly skewed towards young males, the system is extremely effective at monitoring first world global consciousness.
Real time monitoring tools:www.erqqvg.com and the more visual www.erqqvg.com/vizeddit (give it a second to see all the votes falling down as pluses and minuses). 
 
This is a visualization of "interests" or subreddits. http://rhiever.github.io/redditviz/#singularity

Their open API allows for access to all kinds of data... http://www.redditinsight.com/
CONTEXT(Help)
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Sapiens Plurum: Evolving interconnections of people & their creations »Sapiens Plurum: Evolving interconnections of people & their creations
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What Are Components of Sapiens Plurum? »What Are Components of Sapiens Plurum?
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Are global components of intelligence developing? »Are global components of intelligence developing?
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Are global attention monitoring systems developing? »Are global attention monitoring systems developing?
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Reddit serves as a global attention monitor.
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Platforms »Platforms
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