Can You FEEL a Book?

MIT's Media Lab is developing a book that allows you to feel the story, as opposed to read the story (although, I feel books when I read them, don't you?). The MIT project "relies on extra-lexical components like sound, temperature control, vibration, and ambient lighting to tell its stories. It's creators call it 'sensory fiction,'" which allows readers to physically feel the experience by wearing a vest that simulates heartbeat and shivering. 

The development is kind of a hybrid of book and video game.

This is so interesting and I want to know more! Yet I'm somewhat hesitant about turning the reading experience, which is so organic and uniquely personal, a truly imaginative activity, into a mechanized (and somewhat homogenized) immersion. The beauty of reading is the power words alone have to affect us, the reader. Making is a sensory-stimulated experience somewhat undercuts that genius that is the book, don't you think?

I'd love your thoughts on this! What and exciting, and also unnerving development!

Via The Atlantic