Transfer experiences over the internet

[Canoro Philipp]

a Knol is a unit of knowledge, thats a Google project, the idea behind it is that we would be able to share our experiences with each other, not just our knowledge, currently, you are able to explain with text, sounds and graphics how you feel, but the other person would never feel it the way you did. i say that is almost impossible, but we can get closer to that.

however you explain would not be enough, because of the lack of words in our languages, we have a set of words that cover almost anything we can think of, every action, everything that exist, but some details of the experience we want to share gets lost for lack of words.

we dont need to use words to transfer our experiences, we need to transfer the experiences themselves, techonologically we have focused in reciving part of the experience with our sight and hearing senses, and developed it a lot, but it doesnt matter how more refined a picture is, we are only taking the visual part of the experience, or how good it sounds, we are only reciving the hearing part of it. the day we are able to transfer our experiences effectivly, would be when we could send each other smell, touch, sight, sound, and taste.

theres a device that transfer smells, its called DigiScent, it has a palette of aromas, the device read some code from a website, and based on that creates the smell, it was a neat idea, but the creators run out of funds. i dont see how companies didnt see how that would have open our sharing of experiences to a much larger range, 3 senses now, 3 channels that we could have used to connect. we have conformed to sound and video, ignoring our other senses and by that we have crippled our communications system.

we desperatly need to advance to other forms instead of focusing on polishing the ones we already have, we need to communicate experiences better. if we really want to share experiences, we should support devices for the other senses. someday the ability to have more senses channels to communicate will become mainstream, by that day we are going to wish we had that device earlier.

[WADE1 Jya]

every new technology has pros & cons

if "DigiScent" or some kind of smellovision is ever implemented it will be very cool

but we'll have to watch out for getting rickrolled with literal stinkbombs in our email attachments & stuff

 

[Canoro Philipp]

thats true, with every new technology there will be people that will find a way to use it in a negative way, maybe to troll, like we have seen with gross graphic art or sounds. i think the benefits it will bring is worth it.

what strange me most, is that many powerful investors dont see any benefit in it, for example the food industry, the scented candles industry, the perfume industry. the product is already done, no need to invent it.

i been waiting for so long for more channels to transfer our experiences but it seems we, the internet people, have been conformed to those two channels as a main system for experience transfers. when the technology is here, we will realize how much we need it.

 

[WADE1 Jya]

It might be something to do with humans have a poor sense of smell so the technology is poorly developed. A poor sense of smell has been the evolutionary sacrifice of increasing our visual ability. Thus we value & invest in visual (and sound) experience the most, these are our primary senses.

That's my guess anyway :matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

Tactile interfaces are being developed in Japan, transmitting touch would have a bigger marketability than smell I think, so we might see that implemented first (more potential investors from many markets).

[Charolotte Caxton]

There already is Lost in Translation, when I say something, the hearer may or may not get what I was saying at all. I do expect communication to advance, but I hope it will be by thought and not sense.

 

Because you have to wonder now. How did the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like. huh?. Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken for example, maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything. - Mouse

 

You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?

(Takes a bite of steak)

Ignorance is bliss. - Cypher

[Madelaine McMasters]

http://jofish.com/writing/smellasmedia35.pdf

I saw Jofish's prototype. I must say that after watching it work, I walked away thoroughly impressed with the elegance and efficiency of written language. In one paragraph of text, Mark Twain could better describe a fragrance to me than inStink could synthesize from it's crude palette of scents. Your nose can perceive only a smell. Your imagination can perceive anything.

Humanity has a huge pool of shared experience from which to draw, making the written word the most powerful tool we have. I'd like to see better ways of using our tremendous sensory bandwidth, but I don't think it will be easy. And the idea of sharing experiences competes for my attention with the idea of expanding them. Wouldn't you like to feel the wiggle of a bacterium floating in that drop of water?

[Canoro Philipp]

maybe its true, the less necessary a sense is for interacting with our environment, the weaker that sense becomes, and some day will see it happen.

maybe we will invest next in this order:

touch

smell

taste

[Canoro Philipp]

i hope that the next communication device that we would have will be of thought instead of sense too, it would be a more direct way.

there are ways to create certain chemicals to replicate flavor, there are experts who can do that, think of jelly beans and its recipes, smell is not very different from taste, so maybe a something similar can be done to capture the smells.

i think the machines would just reflect something programmed by a user, and then create them themselves with code, with the scents palette, like graphics. it may be of low resolution at first, as every new technology is, and it may not give the exact smell, but it will get closer with time.

[WADE1 Jya]

The food industry could use it for tempting ads, so you could smell what's cooking in their kitchen!

However, the scented candles industry & the perfume industry... anyone invested in selling a scent directly might be a little scared of the concept. What can be transferred can be copied, so there would be the new problem of smell piracy! Why buy the original perfume or the scented candle if anyone can go to their "jailbroken" Digiscent & play the bootleg for free?

These companies might take steps to ensure their product is never uploaded into such a device. If a company's trademark exclusive scent was ever digitized into such a device, now any customer can freely share it with all their friends, & everyone out there can copy the scent endlessly & precisely... with no effort.

Secure product suddenly become unsecure :matte-motes-stress:

[Canoro Philipp]

is true that your imagination can create anything, it can recreate exactly a memory, with enough specifications from language it can create something close to what the speaker is saying, but not completely close, althought our imagination will complete the part where we dont have specifications, thats why i think that language can be improved by adding the bandwidth of our other three senses.

its true, its never going to compare to a real experience, just like our screens and speakers dont deliver the sound as clear as when you are there in real.

we could expand it by sharing, the more we share experiences on the internet, the larger the pool of experiences becomes, expanding our choice of experiences hugely.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

This gets a little deep.  Some years ago a friend and I had a discussion about stuff.  Stuff like colors, smells, tastes......all this stuff you are talking about.  My friend asked what if she could see through my eyes and I could see through her eyes would the color red look the same?  Maybe the red I saw through her eyes looked yellow to me and it looked blue to her using each others eyes?  Would it matter?  We decided that it would not since what either of percieved as red would be red no matter what color the other saw using each others eyes.  Then what about a rose?  What if it smelled like a lemon using her nose?  Same thing.........it wouldn't matter at all.  A Hershey's Candy Kiss...........it might taste like peppermint to me.  It's all entirely personal.  What any of us smells, tastes, sees or hears is only relevant to ourselves and is not important to anyone but ourselves........we communicate those things by our personal experience with those things.  And everyone understands each other.

 

If what you are talking about ever comes into use, there is going to have to be some set of univerial senses set.  By who?  That smell-o-vision stuff of a couple decades ago failed.........maybe because no one could arrive on any universal set of what anything should smell like for anyone else?  Some said it worked great.........others said it was a total fail and didn't even come close to replicating a scent.  I think that the reason is the later.........who says what something smells like for anyone else?  You can't do it.  And that's why it will never happen.........it's impossible for any consensus to be arrived at.

[Sammantha Koppel]

I don't want smells coming from my computer!  It's annoying enough when someone insists on voice in SL.  Can you imagine if it were possible to send smells?  No thank you!

I believe more in the power of words.  A good story teller can put the reader or listener right in the middle of an experience by touching the imagination.  Perhaps we need to focus more on language than technological advances for sharing experiences.

[Freecilla Kuhn]

If there is no obvious way to make money from it, it wont happen. This is the stuggle SL has been having with real world businesses and why so many have left SL. As cool as something might be it has to be profitable in this current world or no one wants to hear it let alone smell it. Remember, if your feet smell and your nose is running... you might be upside down.

[Sundbuns Camel]

So, what do prims smell like?

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I'm in 100% agreement.  Someone send me the smell of what that someone says is a rose and that smells like  dirty feet to me it spoils everything.  Tell me in words in such a way that I smell a rose........not some stinky feet.  Language is the most powerful form of communication we have.  We need to use it to that end.  But, we have a lot of lazy people in this world who don't think spelling or grammer is important.............and, because of that, we can't communicate much at all.

[Canoro Philipp]

there wouldnt be much of a problem because the food and perfume industry dont use copyright, they didnt want it because it would be a hassle, the lawsuits and protecting their recipes or smells. some other maybe, the ones who have copyright on some extra senses.

[Canoro Philipp]

there is a universal senses set, they are in the original object.

you can smell a banana and percieve its scent differently than i would, but the smell coming from the banana is the same, is our minds who are percieving it differently, the machine could replicate the exact smell from the original banana, and when we both smell it, we will smell it exactly as different.

[WADE1 Jya]

I think its only a matter of time before we see all this. If the corporate world don't support it, the people will build it eventually. Its just a matter of components & construction getting cheap enough. Once we have a matured technology of sophisticated desktop fabrication, a smell add-on to experience would be popular. Why not? Its something that would definitely enhance home entertainment.

Of course at that point we'll be able to transmit objects themselves... send digital files from fabber to fabber of whatever the generic materials can handle.

[Canoro Philipp]

i can see that coming, people asking for smells.

its true that we have a lot words to describe almost everything, but when you add music to them, and some visual art, it becomes enhanced. combine that with other senses.

[Canoro Philipp]

there is profit from it, mainly in advertisement, if you could make someone buying your hamburguer, getting it hungry, you have made profit. or selling a shampoo with the smell in the commercial.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Then the Peter Pan peanut butter commercial.......all those people with peanut allergies would simply love the advertiser (to the tune of millions in settlements).  :matte-motes-big-grin:

[Canoro Philipp]

its great that the smell device is already invented, by the time the creators have money to continue the project and make it mainstream it will come enhanced.

[WADE1 Jya]

What about the problem of people playing amplified bad smells in public spaces?

You're trying to smell the rose that your sweetheart sent you, but the guy sitting next to you on the bus won't turn down the chili recipes!

This could get annoying

[Canoro Philipp]

they will continue hating the product, but now more the advertisement.

[Canoro Philipp]

prims smell like wood