The next new media I would like to see would involve more than the three main senses that all media currently caters to. For instance there is media for sound, sight, and to some extent touch, but there is nothing for taste or smell. I can see how before there could be an issue considering the limits of technology, but I think as technology gets better, especially with ways to read and stimulate the mind, I feel like Virtual Reality which included taste and smell as well could be a whole new media.
Picture watching The Great British Baking show and as the baked goods are being made you can smell the deliciousness in progress! There would need to be options that can be adjusted, such as intensity or blacklisting certain smells that are offensive, and the ability to opt out of it all together, but the potential for this new media would be great. Of course this will be like all media at it is first introduced, the niche market, the scapegoating, the general acceptance, and finally the realization of being a new media.
You are not alone in your thinking! A Chinese company PIMAX announced recently that it was going to partner with Vaqso and use their scent emitter on the PIMAX 8K headset. Olorama, another such company, has working scent emitters technology for VR where they created synchronized scents to go with a VR workshop on Lancome products. There's even a working VR headset prototype project headed by Takuji Narumi that can literally change a users taste of a cookie. Similarly, Arinobu Niijima and Takefumi Ogawa‘s Electric Food Texture System is working on mimicking food texture and taste using electrodes to stimulate muscles in the jaw. We may not be far away from your idea.
ReplyDeleteWow! This sounds like a delicious idea! I would love to see technology come full circle and work with scents. This would really help to make simulations feel even more real.
ReplyDeleteThis would entail full and outright acceptance of technology as time flies. Given the younger folks are more accepting and adaptive of technology, this actually may happen. Good times lie ahead, I tell you.
ReplyDeleteThis is a crazy idea but I guess something that is already in the works!? I would never have thought that you could synthetically create smells and whatnot, and that would be a crazy experience for sure. Very creative!
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