"Once More, With Feeling": Using Haptics to Preserve Tactile Memories

• Published in: International journal of human-computer interaction 2015-01, Vol.31 (1), p.65-71
• Main Author: Brown, John N. A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communities; Digital broadcasting; Ghosts; Haptics; Human; Interactive computer systems; Preserves; Recognition; Tactile; Technological change; Technology adoption; Touch
• ISSN: 1044-7318; 1532-7590; 1044-7318
• DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2014.959100

The use of haptics as a complement to verbal and visual communication across digital media is becoming well understood. Good arguments have also been made for the adoption of this modality for the communication of emotive, affective information. This article proposes an additional purpose for the consideration of the haptic community: the possibility of storing individually recognizable touch. In this manner, the comforting touch of a loved one could be recorded for access at a distance from the original event, whether that distance is in space or time. This is not the familiar attempt to re-create perfectly the tactile impression of a generic human action such as a hug or a hand clasp. Furthermore, this is far from the attempts to mechanically re-create sexual intimacy. Rather the article proposes the preservation of just enough information about a pattern of touch to make it preattentively recognizable as a "ghost touch" from a loved one who is, temporarily or permanently, beyond one's reach. The article proposes that current technology should already make it possible to record and replay a single pattern of movement or a series of interrelated movements-where the technology triggers reactions from the user as they would be triggered by their loved one. It is time to consider focusing this developing technology on the purely emotional, entirely human desire to be touched again by a remembered love.