Imagining the Impossible: When Fantasy May Just Become a Reality

A news article was in a corner waiting to be found by the tweens at the Young Writers' Club (Jr.) program. And what did we discover?

What if we could not only talk and see a person on a video call but also smell the drink or food or anything else that is in the vicinity?

There were soft giggles at first when that question was raised.

“Is this a fantasy or real?”

The tweens unanimously agreed that this had to be fantasy. It simply isn’t possible to smell through a phone.

When your voice can get through a phone, when your images can get through a phone, why not smell?

That was a question that these bright tweens were evidently not expecting.

The first telephones were landline phones and could not be moved around.

Then came along the cordless phones that let you move around the house with them as you talked. They listened in with utter disbelief. This generation evidently had seen neither of these and were more accustomed to cell phones, more specifically smart phones.

Making an audio call or a video call or a zoom call for an online meeting such as ours is something that they have grown up with. It is so routine that just as so many things that we tend to take for granted, the ability to see a person as well as hear a person talk even though they may be located miles away from us, is something we don’t question or ponder about. It is such an integral part of lives today. Imagining the possibility of smell being transported through phones was hard enough. This being a real possibility was far fetched. But that helped get their 100% attention as we caught up with this news article lying in the corner away from spotlight.

Scientist are exploring the idea of enabling phones to transmit smell as a feature in video calls. If successful, this could be real in the future.

How is the technology is likely to work?

Just as the three primary colors are varied in different proportions to create a variety of color pixels on our phones, phones of the future are likely to have cartridges with basic smells which can be combined in different proportions to create a particular smell.

What could be the purpose that it serves?

“It sounds like a feature that is not much of use.”

“Maybe not. You could probably alert a person on the other side if they have been unable to notice themselves, that something seems to be burning on their side. Particularly useful for those who have lost their sense of smell.” ”Or it may come of use in tracking down someone who is in trouble. In movies detectives often sift through visual details to zero in on the location.”

“Might be a disaster for some. For instance if you are faking over a video call with your friends that you are not enjoying your birthday and you have a nice cake that smells heavenly, then that’s calling for trouble.”

That news update definitely got our engines of imagination started. But we were unable to decide if this is a feature that we would like to have.

A tween suggested making this feature optional instead of being a standard feature. That should ease the use of the future phone a bit!

Curious to read the article- here it is

Previously published on Tween Tribune- A Talking Circles Publication