What is the purpose of a poke you can’t feel? That’s what occcured to the creators of a device called, appropriately enough, the poking machine.
Netherlands-based student inventors Jasper van Loenen and Bartholomäus Traubeck constructed an armband that physically pokes you when someone pokes you virtually on Facebook.
“This way users can connect not only virtually but also physically,” Jasper van Loenen says on his website.
The poking machine has a motorized lever connected to a 9-volt battery and a Bluetooth chip. The chip is linked to your smartphone. When someone pokes you on Facebook, the message is sent to your smartphone and then to the poking machine, which has a dish sponge-shaped neon case.
“Online social networks are platforms for communication, enabling us to connect anywhere we go.
However, they still lack the mediation of physical communication,” the pair told The Next Web.
“Facebook tries to improve this by enabling its users to poke each other, which basically only sends another written message to the person you poke, without conveying the original intent of the poking gesture.”
This isn’t the first time clever inventors brought something from the virtual Facebook world into real life, but it does appear to be the first attempt to convert an action on Facebook into physical communication.
Would you want to feel someone poke you on Facebook? How much would you pay for this? Tell us in the comments.
Source: Mashable
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