I have long been fascinated with optical illusions. There are so many ways to fool vision it is nearly impossible to list all of them. However, the Internet has tried. The Internet is awash, replete, jammed, brimming, teeming, overflowing with optical illusion images. With so many ways to fool the eye, it is a wonder why the Mabel-Factor-Revlang make-up faction hasn't patented some of these illusions to scam the rest of us into thinking those users of Mabel-Factor-Revlang products look different than they appear to us.
This got me thinking about the other four senses. I've been tactilely fooled before - once at EPCOT Center I felt a series of tubes next to each other. They all had water running through them. Warm in the first tube, cool in the second, etc. When felt independently, each one's temperature felt mild, but collectively, the warm felt very hot and the cool felt cold.
Although this illusion is rare (making hot feel cold or hard feel soft), I think there are comparatively fewer auditory, olfactory, or gustatory illusions to be found on the web. It is common that people "hear something" when they really didn't but I'm not referring to mis-heard or mis-tasted experiences. I'm referring to one sound that should be identifiable as one thing but is indeed another - not unlike the sweet sound of my smokin' hot wife's voice which sounds like a combination of unrelated elements.
I think the lack of these illusions will ultimately result in the demise of the Internet as we know it - that or we will all just grow tired of it one day...
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