Can you remember everything you touched today? Does what we touch define who we are? After all, these will become the artifacts that will be left behind for future archeologists. Recently the BBC featured Argentinian designer Paula Zuccotti’s snapshots of daily life, where she photographed all the objects people touched in a 24-hour space. “Everything We Touch” revealed that we touched on average 140 objects a day. It revealed not only what we touched but our daily patterns in what order we touched them.
But what if we didn’t have hands, could we still touch? Or if we weren’t even in the same room? Like a tree falling in the woods, if we only touched something virtually did we touch it at all? Recently technology has been aimed at changing the way we touch and by relationship, the way we are.
Prosthetic limbs that allow you to feel
How would you use a modern smartphone or tablet without the fingers to type? No longer about maintaining the aesthetic of a lost limb, amputees and those that have upper limb deficiencies are regaining their sense of touch with incredible leaps in prosthetic technology. Active prostheses like that of Touch Bionics connect to your active nerves and allow wearers to not only use this new hand or fingers, but to easily change the grip pressure, customizable via an app.
New levels of prosthetics also can allow for a sense of pressure allowing amputees to adapt more easily to things like walking. These sensors are near curing phantom limb syndrome.
It’s not just sensors controlled by muscle memory. After the landmine and IED-rich wars in Afghanistan and Iraq created many veteran amputees, the U.S. Pentagon’s king of R&D Darpa has invested millions into prosthetics research. Out of it came the mind-controlled artificial limb which interfaces directly with the wearer’s nervous system, not having to touch the brain at all. This enables “blind tasks” we take for granted, like rummaging through a bag, searching for our keys with no visual.
These advances also allow for coordinated muscle movements, both between different parts of prostheses and between the prosthetic and different muscle groups.
Does an electronic signature mean less?
But touch tech advances may not only be for the better. Recently, the University of Virginia has discovered the power of the pen in hand. Most of the Western world have accepted the electronic signature as bound by law, but what Professor Eileen Chou has realized is that electronic signatures have subtly changed our behavior.
“I want you to think back to when you were little, and you want to create your very own signature. You spend hours crafting the best way, the best cursive to use, and the end product is also something that’s very intimate to you,” Chou said on NPR. “It represents who you are. It represents a piece of your identity.”
But now if you are signing legal documents online like for mortgages or bank loans, you may not think twice and automatically commit to something you hadn’t thought through. And more importantly, you are more likely to lie when you sign on the digital line. When users submitted a computer-generated code in lieu of a digital signature, cheating increased even more
“While these signatures are objectively the same, they do not carry the same psychological and the symbolic weight,” Chou said. We psychologically distance ourselves from the “promise the signature is supposed to imply.” So while many of us are concerned that someone will steal our signature, it’s more likely our eSignature could be worth less.
Are there other cool things happening in the world of touch? Tweet us them to @TefDigital!
