Synthetic senses

We all perceive the world through our senses. Together, they filter reality into subjective experience. But reality has so much more to it than what we can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell, right? Yes, but it is harder to imagine that I expected.

A colorblind person can't understand what some colors look like; she has no basis to compare red and green. Just knowing there is a difference doesn't make the problem go away. Similarly, we don't understand physical concepts like "north" or "10 amps" until they are translated, with instruments, into something that we can sense. A few pioneers have tried to incorporate these instruments into their bodies, in hope of finding a new, synthetic sense.

Adam Skory from Noisebridge (a hackspace) developed a wearable directional sensor called the Northpaw that translates the magnetic direction into a buzzing signal. The wearer feels a constant vibration on her ankle, but the experience quickly becomes subconscious - the brain can rewire the sense of touch into a new sense of direction! This wonderful property of the brain is called "neuroplasticity".

"It passes in and out of my integrated experience. When it’s at its best, my awareness is not of the touch from the Northpaw, it’s the awareness of north from the Northpaw." - My New Sense Organ


While having a compass sense might not seem useful to most people, the Air Force has been working on a similar device that helps pilots: the Spatial Orientation Enhancement System. During tricky maneuvers, a pilot may lose the sense of gravity, which is perceived by our inner ears. In free-fall, this sense becomes disoriented, and the pilot may forget which way is down - the result can be fatal. This suit uses gentle vibrations to remind him the right direction. This augmented sense may become even more useful as the Airforce switches from aircrafts to UAVs: a joystick pilot currently has no situational awareness other than what he sees on the screen.

Some body-modification enthusiasts have implanted small magnets into their fingertips, enabling them to feel magnetic fields, electric currents, and some metals.

But there's more, right? What else can we sense? Most super-senses are just augmentations of the ones we have: Superman's x-ray vision, Predator's infrared vision, telescopic and microscopic vision, super-hearing, a bat's echolocation, a dog's ability of smell, a bee's vision of polarized light, a spider's sense of vibration. Barring any supernatural phenomena, it seems we've come to the end of our exploration of sensory input. After all, physics and chemistry only allows for a few fundamental modes of interaction.

Or maybe, like the colorblind, I'm unable to imagine what other wonderful experiences there are in the margins of reality.