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iLickit App Reveals iPhone Tongue Interface
The iLickit app reveals a hitherto neglected side of the iPhone's fabled multitouch screen features - namely, the tongue interface.
The following video demonstrates the use of the iLickit application.
(iLickit iPhone app video)
Apple could not be reached for comment regarding plans to sell the first smartphone to implement a multi-tongue interface.
Readers may believe that this is just one of those "hey, look, I found a wacky iPhone app" posts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Regular Technovelgy readers understand the importance of the tongue interface, which was pioneered in science fiction.
Readers will no doubt recall the tongue-based dental switchboard that Gully Foyle used in Alfred Bester's 1956 classic The Stars My Destination:
He pressed hard with his tongue against his right upper first molar. The operation that had transformed half his body into an electronic machine, had located the control switchboard in his teeth. Foyle pressed a tooth with his tongue and the peripheral cells of his retina were excited into emitting a soft light...
(Read more about Bester's dental switchboard)
Tongue interfaces may play an important role in assistive technologies for people with high spinal chord injuries, a Tongue Controller Uses Tongue Magnets. I wonder if it would be possible to use a tongue-based iPhone application to control a wheelchair.
(Tongue controller uses magnetic field sensors)
Via The Raw Feed.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/7/2009)
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