Nest Book Club
Nova726
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
"Sensory Fiction" ...interesting
There's no actual plans to manufacture this but I thought it was interesting. I'd probably cry if (when?) book technology reaches this point.
Three MIT students have invented what they call “Sensory Fiction”, essentially a wired book connected to a wearable unit made up of various sensors. The book senses what page the reader is on and triggers certain effects, making the reader physiologically experience what the protagonist feels. To do this, the book uses 150 programmable LEDs that emit ambient light to reflect the mood, while the wearable unit uses vibration to influence the reader’s heart rate and simulate shivers, a body compressor to convey chest tension and a heating device to create localized fluctuations in body temperature.
For their prototype story, the students (Felix Heibeck, Alexis Hope and Julie Legault) appropriately chose the 1973 proto-cyberpunk novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Triptee, Jr., whose afflicted protagonist uses a sophisticated computer to experience “both deep love and ultimate despair, the freedom of Barcelona sunshine and the captivity of a dark damp cellar” through another body by remote control.
There are no plans to manufacture Sensory Fiction, as the students told Paste, “Sensory Fiction is a class project of the class SciFi2SciFab. It is an artifact inspired by the readings of the class, most popularly the ‘primer’ that occurs in Neil Stephenson’s Diamond Age. 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. It is an artifact meant to provoke discussions.”
The prototype certainly does raise some interesting questions—would such a product potentially enable (or even encourage) readers to take an emotional shortcut of sorts rather than develop their own sense of empathy? Are emotions that are elicited physically by a machine any less legitimate that those elicited mentally by a novel? Or (a more likely consequence) would the overall quality of Sensory Fiction writing decrease as authors became too dependent on the effects of the wearable’s external stimuli?
Of course, as the engineers assert, Sensory Fiction might simply provide a new dimension of storytelling.
“Traditionally, fiction creates and induces emotions and empathy through words and images,” the students write on their blog. “By using a combination of networked sensors and actuators, the Sensory Fiction author is provided with new means of conveying plot, mood, and emotion while still allowing space for the reader’s imagination. These tools can be wielded to create an immersive storytelling experience tailored to the reader.”
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"Sensory Fiction" Makes Books Physically Stimulating
What if a book could grip you, make your heart race or get you hot under the collar—literally?
Three MIT students have invented what they call “Sensory Fiction”, essentially a wired book connected to a wearable unit made up of various sensors. The book senses what page the reader is on and triggers certain effects, making the reader physiologically experience what the protagonist feels. To do this, the book uses 150 programmable LEDs that emit ambient light to reflect the mood, while the wearable unit uses vibration to influence the reader’s heart rate and simulate shivers, a body compressor to convey chest tension and a heating device to create localized fluctuations in body temperature.
For their prototype story, the students (Felix Heibeck, Alexis Hope and Julie Legault) appropriately chose the 1973 proto-cyberpunk novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Triptee, Jr., whose afflicted protagonist uses a sophisticated computer to experience “both deep love and ultimate despair, the freedom of Barcelona sunshine and the captivity of a dark damp cellar” through another body by remote control.
There are no plans to manufacture Sensory Fiction, as the students told Paste, “Sensory Fiction is a class project of the class SciFi2SciFab. It is an artifact inspired by the readings of the class, most popularly the ‘primer’ that occurs in Neil Stephenson’s Diamond Age. 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. It is an artifact meant to provoke discussions.”
The prototype certainly does raise some interesting questions—would such a product potentially enable (or even encourage) readers to take an emotional shortcut of sorts rather than develop their own sense of empathy? Are emotions that are elicited physically by a machine any less legitimate that those elicited mentally by a novel? Or (a more likely consequence) would the overall quality of Sensory Fiction writing decrease as authors became too dependent on the effects of the wearable’s external stimuli?
Of course, as the engineers assert, Sensory Fiction might simply provide a new dimension of storytelling.
“Traditionally, fiction creates and induces emotions and empathy through words and images,” the students write on their blog. “By using a combination of networked sensors and actuators, the Sensory Fiction author is provided with new means of conveying plot, mood, and emotion while still allowing space for the reader’s imagination. These tools can be wielded to create an immersive storytelling experience tailored to the reader.”
Re: "Sensory Fiction" ...interesting
I hear about things like this and I only think of Ready Player One and those suits that they would wear to be completely plugged in. Google Glass is another one. It terrifies me. The description at the beginning of Ready Player One of how the world got to where they were scared the ever-loving crap out of me because of how real and possible it all felt.
Sugar & Spice
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