A cell phone prototype that communicates a wet kiss was demonstrated by researcher Fabian Hemmert at a TED event in Berlin. This short video shows off his prototype mobile phones for hand-holding, kissing and intimate whispering.
"I'd like to speak about giving two users a feeling for each other over mobile phones. Today's question is 'How can we make telecommunication more emotional?' Why would we want to do that? ...because you want to be in touch, and that's more an emotional need and not a rational need. How can we put more emotion into a mobile phone? ...Maybe we can help people be in physical touch... Can you put kissing into a mobile phone?"
He had three prototypes, the first of which uses a simple additional plate to communicate the pressure of hand-holding. The second is a device that allows the user to feel the moisture of a moist kiss. The third provides just a puff of air, like you might feel if someone whispered in your ear.
Hemmert's prototypes are interesting, but he is about forty-five years behind science fiction writers. Frederik Pohl wrote about virtual kisses via tactile net in his amazing 1965 novel The Age of the Pussyfoot; you simply use your joymaker:
"Man Forrester, the personal callers are as follows:
...Adne Bensen: female, Universalist, Arcadian-Trimmer, twenty-three declared, five feet seven inches, experiencer-homeswoman, no business stated. Her kiss follows."
Forrester did not know what to expect but was pleasantly ready for anything.
What he got was indeed a kiss...
Startled, he touched his mouth. "How the devil did you do that?" he shouted.
(Read more about Pohl's Virtual Kiss (Tactile Net))
I note in passing that Pohl, in his typically thorough fashion, had devised not only a way to deliver a cell phone kiss, but to record a kiss as well, so it could be delivered by voicemail, as seen in the above passage.
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