by David Meyer, GigaOM
It’s easy to be sniffy about the concept of sending odors through the internet, but researchers are nonetheless hard at work on folding the sense of smell into the digital repertoire. The first world congress of the Digital Olfaction Society (tagline: “The Smell of Digital”), the stated goal of which is to “digitize, transmit, reproduce and recapture smells, flavors and fragrances” was recently held. You know that perennial April Fool’s joke about sending odors through the internet, most recently spun up by Google? The thing is, as my colleague Barb Darrow pointed out in the wake of Google’s gag this year, there really are serious efforts underway to make the digital capture and production of aromas a reality. The conference was small, but the participants spanned the disciplines of computer science, biochemistry, engineering, smart clothing design and perfume retail.
http://gigaom.com/2013/04/13/how-technology-is-slowly-developing-its-sense-of-smell/
Share on Facebook