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  • From: "Michael D. Thomas" <mdthomas AT mindspring.com>
  • To: "InterNetWorkers" <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Tactile Cellphones
  • Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 01:44:00 -0400


One of my favorite topics is the difference in our various modes of
communication. E.g., email is asynchronous, low emotional bandwidth, but has
great memory. Chat is more syncronous, low emotional bandwidth, but with
poorer memory. Jack Welch has noted that fax has a higher emotional bandwidth
than email.

Cell phones are synchronous and higher emotional bandwidth.

And now, the emotional bandwidth is about to get a bit higher...

I wonder if they come with a WAP browser??

--- Squishy cellphones add a buzz to calls ---

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992206

Vibrating rubber cellphones could be the next big thing in mobile
communications, allowing people to communicate by squishing the phone to
transmit vibrations along with their spoken words. According to a research
team at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the idea will make
phoning more fun.
Many mobile phones can already be made to vibrate instead of ring when you do
not want people to know you are getting a call. But these vibrations, caused
by a motor spinning an eccentric weight inside the device, are too crude for
subtle communication, says Angela Chang of the lab's Tangible Media Group.
"They're either on or off," she says.

But when you grip Chang's prototype latex cellphone, your fingers and thumb
wrap around five tiny speakers which vibrate against your skin around 250
times per second. Beneath these speakers sit pressure sensors, so you can
transmit vibration as well as receiving it.





  • Tactile Cellphones, Michael D. Thomas, 04/25/2002

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