Transfer experiences over the internet

[Canoro Philipp]

there could be a very negative side of it, i dont think it will over side the positive of it.

[Sammantha Koppel]

I disagree that music and visual art enhance language.  They simply remove the need to use one's imagination to a degree.  If I'm reading a book, I don't want pictures in it.  I don't want a musical score to accompany it.  I certainly don't want smells coming out of the book.  However, as I read, I assure you that if the author did his job, I will see, hear, smell, taste and feel things much more clearly than if someone "enhanced" it with other elements. 

[Canoro Philipp]

i have heard some artists that write and sing poems and sounds great, they decided to offer their music and lyrics combined to give a richer experience to the listeners of what they mean, i think that if the author would wanted to share with you that art, you would not recieve it completely, if you just read the lyrics.

you could imagine the melody, but it would not be what the author meant.

[Sy Beck]

There would undoubtedly be commercial reasons to develop these sensory addons/plugins.  I see online clothes selling getting a boost for one.  If you ever look at a woman clothes shopping she will never stop touching the fabric while she checks out it's pattern, colours and price tag.  This tactile inspection is of course an impossible task online along with a virtual changing room to see if the garment fits as I've been informed, told, left in no doubt "educated" that 99% of clothes' size labels are false and always display a size two sizes larger than the garment in question.

Apart though from commercialisation and an improvement in online retail experience there would be a personal benefit too.  When I was a young boy there were only photos and diaries to record your life experiences.  Now we have videos and soundtracks to accompany them, but what if we could add smell and touch to them?  Maybe I'm strange, but a smell of something can evoke a memory within me with physical effects.  If I ever stand near honeysuckle I'm instantly reminded of my father's funeral as we all had to step back and into a honeysuckle at the entrance to the church to let the cortegé through.  I feel like that 7yr old boy again, frightened and confused; a physical and emotional reaction all set off by a smell. The smell of my children's hair when they were newborns is something I would love to smell again, there is something almost primal about that smell that I can't explain.

If you could also capture the sense of touch to add to this futuristic diary, being held by your parents, your very first kiss (however disasterous and messy), again, your children's first grasp around your finger and so many others you could think of from your own life experiences.

The demand for this "all in one sensory record" would be insatiable.  I remember seeing a film when I was young, I think Christopher Walken starred in it and I can't be bothered to look up the name, where a scientist had developed such a product on tape and people would put on the obligatory immersive headset and could relive their own recorded experiences or experience somebody else's.  It was one of those things along with living on the moon I thought humankind would tick off on it's technological to do list very soon, but alas no.  I do think though that it is something I shall see and experience before I finally curl up my mortal coil.  Any such recording device shall of course be banned from my funeral.

 

[ETA] The Christopher Walken film was Brainstorm.  Ironically, not one I think he would want to relive.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Here's where I have to disagree somewhat that sensory "enhancement" in the form of smell (just one example) can really backfire and become detremental to someone's experience.  Sy used the example of honeysuckle and the negative emotions it provokes for him.  Honeysuckle for me provokes the exact opposite..........childhood memories of playing next honeysuckle covered rocks that encircled a year around spring flowing out of a small bluff on a farm I grew up on.  Butterflies, humming birds and the gentle gurgling of the water flowing from the bluff.  Now imagine I'm writing a book or blog and I wish to discribe those childhood memories and emotions so I include the scent of honeysuckle to "enhance" that experience........Sy's not going to experience what I'm trying to encourage him to experience.  Where, with words (and no scent enhancement) I could envoke that experience.

 

Good written communications can over ride any other sensorary communication........even video imagary.  But, we are getting lazy.  It's easier to just "show you".  I have little doubt that, eventually, something similar will be marketed.  It might even be somewhat successful............but it will never take over the top of the line form of communication.  The written and spoken language.

[Perrie Juran]

Some very interesting thoughts here.  Thinking of several things. They may seem a little random but are related.

Smell is an essential part of taste.  I am not taking the time to recheck the facts right now but as I understand it, if you lose your sense of smell, your sense of taste goes also.

Smell requires that your sensory receptors be able to distinguish between thousands, perhaps millions of different chemicals and chemical combinations.  I am thinking of wine tasters right now.  Maybe thier noses are more sensitive than the average population, but I think mainly their ability to discern different aromas and tastes is based more upon simply exercising that particular sense.  Just like a blind persons tactile sense is enhanced by use.  Try reading braille sometimes.  It's a learned art.  For me, all the bumps feel pretty much the same.

So the limit of this technology would be the limit of the number of chemicals that could be shared.  At best you would get, this smells similar.  To achieve identical would be too massive.

There is a book I would highly recommend.  "Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television," by Jerry Mander.  I would have linked a review but all the reviews I checked sucked.  He does a fantastic job of explaining the impact of visual imagery in technology on the mind. 

I have an older friend who was the lead guitarist in a top ten band for several years who suffers from carpel tunnel and arthritis.  He still performs solo, but is limited on how long he can play.  When he learns or writes  a new song it is 90% mental exercise.  He visualizes in his mind playing the song.  He visualizes the guitar in his hand.  He visualizes playing the individual notes.  And when he picks up his actual guitar, it is all right there for him.  When he does shows, he still packs them in because he is that good.

The mind is an incredible thing!

 

[Canoro Philipp]

i agree, nothing is for everyone, each one percieve things different from each other, and i think that is the base of taste, some like salty, some like sweet. certain types of sensory stimulation would be popular with some people, some will prefer other stimulations.

if you read a description of the mona lisa, it would be a better experience than seeing it yourself? i dont think that any set of words could surpass the experience of actually seeing it.

[Canoro Philipp]

i agree, when the technology gets developed enough to be appealing to the masses, research for it will increase, when investors notice a large market and want to be part of it, that will develop a more precise set of tools to create incredible things that no one can imagine at the moment.

[Canoro Philipp]

you make an interesting point, how some senses are related, some senses are higher priority because we think that what we have is enough to simulate all experiences, if we uncap the smell bandwidth, taste will have a hard time to become mainstream because we already have something that it can not replace perfectly what we meant, but is close.

i think that we would not need to be perfectly exact, just human exact, for example, the human eye can see around 10,000,000 colors, we dont need to go beyond that, because we dont have the brain to process the rest, once we reach the maximum we can percieve, that would be enough.

one thing i see, is that we have not developed at the moment all our brain potential, because of conformism, when we develop all channels, we will see how capable humanity is.

[Ganelon Darkfold]

Well, I don't think one will ever get actual agreement, since what people like varies quite a bit.  Whether someone plays WoW with the graphics quality way up and a home theatre type surround sound system or prefers text-only rp on a plain terminal screen can be a matter of choice.  Yes, it can also be a matter of what toys a person can afford, but I know people with high level systems that still prefer text. 

Smell will probably eventually be something with commonplace peripherals available.  The nasty part of that is the technology will take time to evolve, and it would likely start out as the smell equivalent of old 8 bit graphics.  LOL  It wouldn't be smelling say, a banana.  It would be smelling artificial banana, which is (to my nose) only maybe slightly reminiscent of an actual fruit scent.  So the early versions would likely be more like cheap air freshener than a walk in the outdoors.   

But the potential for a market is there, I think.  Entertainment, novelty, advertising.  Eventually, like video images, it could evolve to be more capable of imitating complex and subtle things, and might eventually become as commonplace as a reasonably nice monitor and graphics card.

I think, though, that imagination would still remain the primary keystone of pereption.  Even in RL, what we imagine a gesture or tone of voice means, or what we think a garment or accessory implies has a profound effect on how we perceive another person and their intentions.  I mean, one might think of that little smile that crinkles the nose a little as cute and engaging, when it actually means your cologne is really obnoxious and the other person is trying hard to not sneeze.  But how you percieve that expression and react to it will have a lot to do with how the situation ends up playing out, and that's pretty much always a matter of imagination and interpretation. 

Not everyone is good with words, and I feel some of that is a matter of natural talent and not "laziness".  I think that if a person's talents lie more in images or sounds, then it's maybe not reasonable to expect them not to show or play something for you as a means of communicating what might take considerable artistry to render well in words.

Back to the OP and the idea of smell over the internet, though.. Well.. It'll probably happen eventually, but it's def not currently on my "I want" list.  LOL

But I do like my widescreen monitor and a reasonable sound system so I can feel a bit of the thump when I land from a jump or the sort of mild pressure from the sound of a waterfall nearby, the vibration of the motor of a vehicle I'm in, or the throb of loud music in a club.  That's enough for me for immersion.  Back in the day of "beep-boop" sound and old-school graphics, it took more imagination to get into games and etc.  I can see where some people might be keen on having smell or etc, though.  If some game or app came out where smell was an important part of it and it became popular enough, I can imagine the technology catching on quickly.

[Void Singer]

while smell is useful, and highly linked to memory, it's not so much linked to passing of information, at least not in a constructable sense. Probably because it is so strongly tied to memories that are personal experiences rather than shared ones.

We've got 3d down to a point where it's reasonable approximation, we've even got sound spatialized now, so I think the next big thing will be to tie in touch.... pliancy, texture, resistance, and weight are all things we can cross relate in our experiences with others easily, so there is a commonality to the information being passed, without the strong personalization of scent.

[Canoro Philipp]

i agree, the mind is the center of perception, after all, all the connections end up there, including the connection of language, maybe we will have other means of connections that we dont imagine yet, but we will have to get there step by step.

to become mainstream it will have to have enough quality, and that would be its starting point, i expect it to get more refined as time goes on like all technologies, the more it improves, the wider its acceptance will be and will find uses in more fields.

[Canoro Philipp]

a standard will probably be set for some representations of smell, just like we see commercials of a sunny day that many believe it gives the majority a good feeling. just like media uses images and sounds to convince us about something, it can find a way to interact directly with our brains stimulating other senses as they do with the two they have available.

[Charolotte Caxton]

---

Canoro Philipp wrote:

you make an interesting point, how some senses are related, some senses are higher priority because we think that what we have is enough to simulate all experiences, if we uncap the smell bandwidth, taste will have a hard time to become mainstream because we already have something that it can not replace perfectly what we meant, but is close.

i think that we would not need to be perfectly exact, just human exact, for example, the human eye can see around 10,000,000 colors, we dont need to go beyond that, because we dont have the brain to process the rest, once we reach the maximum we can percieve, that would be enough.

one thing i see, is that we have not developed at the moment all our brain potential, because of conformism, when we develop all channels, we will see how capable humanity is.

---

 

What if we are using all of our brain, but just have not developed a way of measuring or detecting it?

[Canoro Philipp]

i doubt we have our brains developed at full potential. the human mind has done ashtonishing things like the case of the savant, it has proved that the majority of us are at very low potential, we cant know as much as Kim Peek, or do math like Daniel Tammet, i believe that the part of their brains that do those astonishing things are at its full potential. when a human being is capable to have all those parts developed at those levels, then we could say that we are using all of our brain, to develop it at such levels we need to exercise it developing the technology to do it..

[Argus Collingwood]

---

Canoro Philipp wrote:

prims smell like wood

---

But they taste like chicken;-)

[Charolotte Caxton]

---

Canoro Philipp wrote:

I doubt we have our brains developed at full potential. the human mind has done ashtonishing things like the case of the savant, it has proved that the majority of us are at very low potential, we cant know as much as Kim Peek, or do math like Daniel Tammet, i believe that the part of their brains that do those astonishing things are at its full potential. when a human being is capable to have all those parts developed at those levels, then we could say that we are using all of our brain, to develop it at such levels we need to exercise it developing the technology to do it..

---

What would the purpose be of having so much unused brain matter? Isn't that a waste of space and other resources, such as food and blood and whatever else human organs require to not rot inside of us? What if all that unused brain matter is actually something we as humans used to use, but no longer do? In the example of the savant, just from memory and without any effort at research, aren't those persons only very good at one particular task, such as math or the piano, but painfully inadequate at everything else? Perhaps humans as a species are de-evolving and realizing even less of their potential. Perhaps by producing technology that thinks for us, we will be required to think even less. Not that I mind, I rather drive to the store and pick up dinner than have to run down my own animal and I would much rather a calculating machine do the math for me.

[Canoro Philipp]

i dont think we are devolving, instead, we are evolving our minds and skills with technology, thats what differentiate us from the rest of the species, while other species choosed to evolve their body to get better use of their environment, humans decided that they will use the environment to extend our abilities beyond what our bodies allow us to do, our education system is making sure we have as much information as possible as fast as possible to keep evolving technologically, and i think that high flow of information is getting our minds more skilled, and making us capable of more techonolgical evolution, maybe we can not have the same abilities of the savant biologically, but we are getting close technologically with computers.