Could technology expand digital media beyond sight and sound?

There are obvious boundaries to digital information conveyance, at least today, but could there be an advance that might breach another of the 5 senses? I don’t count braille machines, to me that’s still analog. Any thoughts?

Digital air freshener dispensers?

Electronic aromatherapy diffusers?

I fail to see the proof. How can smell be represented digitally? I’d prefer scientific cites, rather than olfactory ones. Thanks though.

There are amusement park rides and flight simulators where the seat is mounted on computer-controlled gymbals. So body orientation (i.e. inner ear) is one sense that can be recorded and reproduced digitally.

Also some aspects of “touch” are easy to reproduce, namely temperature, wind and tactile feedback.

I’d guess taste is easy - it’s just 5 parameters so a machine can reproduce any combination. The only problem is that in the broad sense, “taste” relies heavily on smell and food texture, which are difficult to quantify and even harder to reproduce.

This is plain stupid. Why is this technology analog and not digital?

Would that be digital because you use your fingers to read it? :smiley:

I am not terribly familiar with braille, but if there is a fixed arrangement of locations, similar to pixels, and certain ones being on and off form the characters, then I would say it is digital. If it is more like handwriting, then I would say analog. Is it possible to write braille by hand?