The Thumb Kiss is a new maneuver for couples on the iPhone. Just download the Pair app onto your iPhone, and then link it to the equivalent copy on your beloved's iPhone. Now you can share drawings, photos, videos, texts - and Thumb Kisses.
Start the Pair video below at about 1:20 to see how the Thumb Kiss works.
(Thumb Kiss demonstration on Pair app at 1:20)
To Thumb Kiss, both you and your partner have to have the app open. When one partner initiates a thumb kiss, it notifies the other. When you enter the Thumb Kiss, you put your thumb on the specified selection of the screen and move your thumb around, searching for where your partner’s thumb is. Once you and your partners thumb coordinates match up for more than a second, the phone vibrates – the kiss.
Science fiction fans might be slightly gagged on the excessive cuteness, but upon prompting will recall a similar feature that was available on the Joymaker, an incredible prediction of smartphones by Frederik Pohl in his 1965 novel The Age of the Pussyfoot.
In the novel, you could leave a virtual kiss using your joy maker in the same way that you might leave a message on someone's phone.
"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. It was disconcerting. No kissing lips were visible. There was a hint of perfumed breath, then a pressure on the lips - warm and soft, moist and sweet.
Startled, he touched his mouth. "How the devil did you do that?" he shouted.
"Sensory stimulation through the tactile net, Man Forrester..."
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