Friday, March 14, 2008

The Speed of Smell

Quite important to the field of interpersonal communications, regardless of whether or not one believes in pheremones, is the speed of smell. How fast can those molecules waft in your general direction? Information is transmitted in this fashion, slower than the speed of sound, and often not registered conciously, but with a power and consistency other forms of communication lack.

In fact I believe there are moments of profound confusion, in which the audible and the visual are abruptly contradicted by the arrival of the olfactory. It's such a strange feeling. I believe those who encase themselves in artificial scents say be overly sensitive to such situations. They are on an offensive, seeking to preempt any olfactory communication by saturating the entire area with chemical decoys.

This approach generally doesn't work. It only delays the inevitable, and overstresses the senses.

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