The future of smell (!)

[Posturesorposes]

So for NYE after doing baby and son a kiddy disco - spouse and I are doing a proper Tandoori chicken on the BBQ (brr) and a Biriyani (home food for me!). The house smells utterly delicious. The question is - if you had said to someone in say the 13th century that one day humans could sit thousands of miles away and see each other (zoom for example) they’d probably have laughed you out of the room. So ...

Today .... if someone tells you that at some point in the future technology will advance far enough for people to SMELL aromas as needed - thousands of miles away, for instance folk back home could smell our Tandoor - would you laugh them out of the room as surely impossible or - do you think , thinking in a long historical line of tech dev - it may just happen?

(Apologies - I’m downing G and T whilst cooking biriyani and such a philosophical pointlessness has indeed occupied me)

Happy 2021!

Yeah I don't think the tech for smelly telly is that far away

Wow really ...... see for me that feels an absolute impossibility. Now that we DO know that whilst we can indeed see someone on another continent we cannot TOUCH them - so what we see (as remarkable as it is) - is ultimately an image - not the actual person - and thus, things like smell and touch feel different to seeing - if you see what I mean? So sure - we have things (images, videos) where seeing in itself is enough, but for things involving the other senses - like touch or smell - it surely wouldn’t work?

I mean - there are still things you can get to move/vibrate (!) remotely mimicking touch etc - but actual touch and therefore actual smell cannot travel and are different from images.

(Ah too much gin already for me!)

God I hope not. I have an anaphylactic artificial fragrance allergy. Add smell-o-vision to the world and people like me are going to find it even harder to survive.

Smell-o-vision 😂 😂 I’m stealing that

The concept of smell-o-vision has been around for a long time. It would be a chemical smell, though, obviously. I'm not sure I'd watch certain films with it, though, like anything historical or set in WWI trenches etc. Or any movie made by young men who think they are funny.

It won't be the exact smell particles, it will be a system that interprets the chemical signals of the scent and then translates them and recreates it your end. You'll need a special computer and you might have to refill the container

What I have in mind is more whether food cooking in UK can be not only seen my family in Asia but also smelled and vice Versa. Naaah the more I think it cannot possibly be....

Can not only be seen by family - it was meant to say.

I can see how it could conceivably be done naturally, if the compounds that cause smell were analysed at one end and then the data transmitted and reconstructed at the other. However, the amount of chemical compounds you would need at the receiving end to recreate any scent would surely render it either impossible or so expensive it may as well be.

Mmmmm, biryani......

I think that some sort of molecular copier, a bit like the 3D photocopier, could transmit the formula for the smell and it be re-created.

Tho’ I would much rather someone was cooking an actual lamb biriyani from scratch in my kitchen.

All I can say at this point is that the ta doors chicken in the barbecue in the freezing garden is more amazing than anything I’ve ever cooked from home and the biriyani could be sold in restaurants if I may say so myself! Just wish I could visit my parents halfway across the world :/

Tandoori
(Gin fingers)