Yuck, that Happy Slapping story has left a nasty taste. So here’s a story that panders to our higher senses altogether.

Again, from We Make Money Not Art comes the F+R Hugs Lycra shirt. The shirt hooks up over a mobile network and via a series of sensors, the wearer receives a simulated hug from a loved one.

The shirts receive the input of heart beat, touch and body temperature of the remote loved one, recreating (through actuators embedded in the shirt) over distance the pulsation, physical pressure, and warmth of a real hug.

During the testing of the shirts, major intensity points were identified on upper arms, on the upper back part during a condolatory hug, around the waistline, neck, shoulders, and hips. In these strategic spots were placed soft technological sandwiches containing the hugging output actuators.

Ahhhh.

But, I believe these “thinking of you, without interrupting you too much” tools will become important in the future of our relationships over the phone. Sure, it might be a high-tech shirt that hugs. Or it could just be something that happens on your phone - maybe it pulses in some way, or glows, or the screen flashes.

It’s already the social norm for dating young couples to sms each other religiously first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It’s the modern equivalent of those long (landline) calls we used to have with the “you hang up first”, “no you”, “no, you” “love you”, “love you”, “I love you more”, “you hang up first”. And just as you were in BIG trouble if you did hang up first, you’re toast if you don’t send those sms’s when you’re meant to.

This simply fulfills a very important human need - a sort of grooming ritual. A transactional analyst would call it a stroking ritual, if Eric Berne’s original studies were updated to today’s context.

So we’ll see many more of these types of low key, ritualistic communication over our phones. This is but the first generation.