14 DAY TRIAL // Words have long been a very powerful tool of orators and writers, but MIT thinks they can be complemented or at least supplemented, by all other senses. So researchers made a wearable book.
Films are, in a sense, the epitome of sensory combination, adding sight and hearing to the power of words, enriching one's experience of a good plot.
It's much better than listening to someone reading a story out loud, at least in the hands of a good director and screenwriter.
But books continue to be a major part of human cultures, all cultures, so researchers from MIT set about making one that exploits one of the two senses that haven't been tackled yet: touch (the other is scent, but it has yet to be implemented).
Anyway, a team from MIT has invented a wearable book. Sounds odd, given that all books are meant to be held, and this is no different.
But the book does have something new to offer: Sensory Fiction, by means of which you can feel what your characters are feeling.
Granted, you can't actually feel their emotions, it's not like an inanimate object could turn empathy around and into a tool.
But as the plot develops, you will get to feel physical sensations associated with the characters' emotions.
And this is where the “wearable” aspect comes in. The book itself is not wearable, but it does have sensors and actuators that hook up to a vest.
When the protagonist becomes scared, for example, you'll feel your chest tighten because of air pressure bags embedded in the vest. The bags will constrict to provide the appropriate sensation.
So far, only a prototype of the book has been made, featuring James Tiptree Junior's novella “The Girl Who Was Plugged In.”
“While the project explores new ways of reading with digital augmentations, this is not a product idea but rather an exploration in the context of science fiction stories,” said researcher Felix Heibeck.
