This article immediately brought to mind a particular conversation in season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer...
Jenny: "Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?"
Giles: "The smell."
Jenny: "Computers don't smell, Rupert."
Giles: "I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly."
The first computer shop that I went to as a kid (back when computer shops were a thing) had a very distinct smell that still evokes very strong memories for me now. I guess it probably wasn’t the computers themselves, but maybe that foamed rubber material used for mousepads and such, plus maybe some static charge in the air from CRTs or something? Any time I catch that smell, I’m immediately back playing Loom and Monkey Island and oogling at Pentiums and 1 GB hard drives.
Are things just not as fascinating now? Is there anything similarly cutting edge today. I know that part of it I was much younger but I also remember most of the people around were way older and seemed to share in the wonder and amazement at those GB+ hard drives and the thought of 32mb of ram.
I guess there's just not anything new that's advancing so rapidly.?.? Like my computer is 13 years old and is still overpowered for 99% of tasks. And they are still selling brand new computers with far lower specs. Imagine in 1997 being satisfied as a developer with a computer from 1984!
I also have other interests and it feels like they have plateaued similarly. I guess I'm still getting some dopamine from solar and battery tech, price drops at least, and some neatness around microcontrollers and IOT but like even food has stopped seeming innovate. It used to be worthy of a day trip to drive into the city to eat at new exotic offerings and now every small town has mostly the same stuff and there's nothing really new in the city either.
It reminded me of a similar sentiment by Marcel Proust:
“So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell we are suddenly intoxicated and similarly we think we no longer love the dead because we don't remember them but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears.”
When i'm sawing wood and the dust starts smelling burnt, I'm immediately transported back into my late dad's workshop. Easily happens when the teeth are wearing out. Also, somehow the fumes of his sigars smelled very similar.
Computers can be smelly, too. Ever booted up your old Windows 95 box from the basement? The dust blown from the fans has a particular smell. It is even more dramatic for real vintage computing like punch card machines, which smell very oily, in a similar way like very old cars and planes.
Yep. The specific smell of the VOCs burning off a new Commodore 64 or 1541 brings back a flood of memories of cold, dark Winter evenings standing in the driveway waiting for the UPS guy.
The complaint is more websites don’t have a distinct smell.
Walk through a library and a dozen different books can all have distinct smells. Perhaps this book was taken to the beach a few times while that that one used a slightly unusual glue. Based on book age and the publisher involved you can even encounter similar smells looking at different copies of the same book at different libraries.
So yes a computer has a distinct smell the way a library does but that smell doesn’t change based on the knowledge you’re browsing.
I am from eastern europe, my dad was vice principal in high school. I would pay good money today to smell again that dusty computer lab room filled with good'ol 386 and mario sounds.
Butyric acid is a highly unappealing compound characteristic of vomit. Cellulose acetate butyrate is used in inks and coatings and can decompose to butyric acid. Maybe how it happened
There was an attempt to standardise scented content back in the '80s, but it didn't stick. The root cause of market failure was consumers deterred by a format war between the compressed odour format, Nosepeg, and the higher fidelity (but patent-encumbered) WIF
The smell of my first IBM ThinkPad was quite strong. Today that smell triggers good memories of playing old video games or building my first website. I still keep that laptop only to occasionally smell it.
Apple trackpads have a certain smell and I don't exactly know how to describe it, but it's similar to Scotch tape. I really like that smell. More things should smell good like that.
Then there’s the scene in the beginning of Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad Love Story where the protagonist is reading a book on an airplane and the young woman next to him complains about the smell.
you can replace smell with audio/music and other sensations. or one could manually add specific smells when studying certain topics.
books are great, but they can't fill many usecases computers can
Jordi Roca, pastry chef from 3 Michelin star restaurant El Celler de Can Roca, designed a dessert based on the scent of old books.
He captures that characteristic smell using a technique called enfleurage, soaking an old book in a neutral fat and then distilling it using a device called Rotaval.
He then pours some drops on thin wafers that resemble book pages.
Wow, that's wild. Certain rooms do that to me. In the house where I grew up it was the upstairs room. (It wasn't the stairs themselves; no other stairs in the house did it) In our current home it's the basement. Sadly those rooms are not filled with books.
I can't tell if it's a statistically real effect. I had always told myself it was not real, but having heard of "Marikio Aoki" phenomenon for the first time just now, I'm wondering...
Well that's interesting, i was in a paper shop this afternoon (i love paper shops), and i suddenly wanted to go to the bathroom and realized it happens often there!
Apart from suffering from dysphonia and as far as I know yes, he is OK. He was awarded World's Best Pastry Chef in 2014 and his restaurant has been awarded either best or second best restaurant in the world by Restaurant Magazine (50 Best) 5 years in a row. Not sure if he needs much help, to be honest.
Nowadays I would be curious, and rather worried, about known carcinogens in those old books. I remember buying in the 1990s a fantasy trade paperback from Tor Books that had an enchanting floral scent, such that I frequently stuck my nose into the book while reading. I don’t know if the publisher and author had deliberately used certain paper or treated it with a certain scent, or this was just a nice coincidence. But now I wonder if I was just giving myself cancer from some chemical that was considered innocuous at the time.
I've had a few close family members pass from cancer. I was a caretaker during these times for them. Talking with them, changing them (people are really heavy!), feeding them, medicating them, bathing them, etc. We had very good hospice support and paid a lot for it, but during the pandemic, everything kinda went to shit, so it was up to me and a few others most of that time.
Dying of cancer is unique to every person and their cancer's progression. But, from my own experiences, dying of cancer is a fucking horrible way to go.
The pain is quite bad as it colonizes various nerve bundles and organs. Morphine only does so much and wanes as the person gets addicted to it and requires more and more to get the numbing results. As such, your mind goes with the morphine intake, a welcome relief really. You can lose function in your limbs and bowels too, though not always. You stop eating and drinking, but you don't stop thirst and hunger. Death really does become a welcome relief after enough weeks/months of this. Then there is the just normal health hazards and pains of laying down and generating filth. The rashes and sores, the muscle loss, the boredom. It's quite horrible. And that's with loving family members helping you at a moment's notice. One pro-tip here, if you can get a death doula.
Look, I get the sentiment here. Yes, live your life, don't worry so much about how it's going to end. There's likely nothing you could have done different anyway. Your end is going to really suck, no matter what. Better to have it be quick and as painless as possible.
But, I do want to advocate for taking common sense measures about carcinogen avoidance. Those are absolutely worth the time and effort. Do not smoke, don't have lead paint in your house, don't be stupid or lazy about getting these things away from you. Your future self will be very thankful you did that. I know, I've helped dying people who didn't.
Yes but some forms of death are a good deal worse than others. Many cancers in particular can be an awful way to go, especially when it's happening with your full knowledge of its inevitability and lack of ability to do anything about it.
I'm not going to give up something I enjoy (or even the indirect benefits of using a particular substance) just to live a few extra years, but if doing so significantly reduces the chances of a drawn-out painful death, then there's surely an alternative worth looking for.
Good point. In general pay attention to old stuff. Pathogens can be chemical or organic.
And indirectly, there seems to be agent spread on books you get from amazon too. I have an old 80s english CS book that smells too bad, so much i get a light headache. (not too far from what you get from some made in china plastics). It may be anti-fugal treatment.
There’s another book smell which I noticed in lots of kids books when I was a kid, that totally smelled like vomit. For years I thought it was because kids barfed all the time but it turns out it was the printing chemicals and paper.
I remember exactly the same thing as a kid in certain books. I acutely remember the feel/texture of the paper of those vomit smell books too. So funny.
It's a common additive in baked goods as well! I used to work at a bakery that would pump it through the HVAC to attract customers. People loved it, but all I could smell was vomit after being around it for so long. I rarely eat pastries anymore.
I once blogged about the lack of word for this smell[0], and came across someone else that has asked this[1] too. Just like 'petrichor' for the smell of fresh earth following rain.
I made up my own word for this, in Norwegian: 'Gammelbokduft'.
Not Norwegian but sounds like it to me, a German. In any case in German this is exactly how you'd create a new word. Gammeln (rotting) + Buch (book) + Duft (scent). Then you have Gammelbuchduft.
In the scribe days in England when literacy was exclusive and the texts and manuscripts were intricate and long-term artistic endeavors…
…the most frequent sealant used was sheep urine. IIRC. Basically there’s a LOT of reasons to wear gloves and a mask in the kind of places where they are stored for longevity.
Source: Early-Middle English course taught by an Oxford Man.
Every now and then you realize people have vastly different base experiences. The smell of old books makes me crinkle my nose and take shallower breaths. I don't like it. Old dust is what I think of. Stale. My physical reaction has always made me assume it is bad for your health. Maybe hints of mold?
I think there is something to this, as another comment mentioned the "soap/cilantro gene". I love the smell of old books, as described in TFA, but I know a guy who hates it. He describes it as you do, as the smell of dust. His taste in food is also quite different from mine, as in we actually seem to detect different things when eating the same food.
For me, old books in particular ... a bit of an issue as a researcher often needing to go into the deep stacks of the University library. I always had to, err, prepare myself, beforehand.
Readit News
Jenny: "Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?"
Giles: "The smell."
Jenny: "Computers don't smell, Rupert."
Giles: "I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly."
I guess there's just not anything new that's advancing so rapidly.?.? Like my computer is 13 years old and is still overpowered for 99% of tasks. And they are still selling brand new computers with far lower specs. Imagine in 1997 being satisfied as a developer with a computer from 1984!
I also have other interests and it feels like they have plateaued similarly. I guess I'm still getting some dopamine from solar and battery tech, price drops at least, and some neatness around microcontrollers and IOT but like even food has stopped seeming innovate. It used to be worthy of a day trip to drive into the city to eat at new exotic offerings and now every small town has mostly the same stuff and there's nothing really new in the city either.
“So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell we are suddenly intoxicated and similarly we think we no longer love the dead because we don't remember them but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears.”
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_de_Proust
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory
"Proust Effect" or something like that in English.
The computer was ok, but it was basically a flood of cat pee seeping in into the memory expansion slot underneath.
Tried everything to get rid of the smell. Including perfume. Didn't make it better. Especially when it got hot.
Still today, when I smell cat urine I instantly think of Motorola 68000 assembly.
Yep. The specific smell of the VOCs burning off a new Commodore 64 or 1541 brings back a flood of memories of cold, dark Winter evenings standing in the driveway waiting for the UPS guy.
Walk through a library and a dozen different books can all have distinct smells. Perhaps this book was taken to the beach a few times while that that one used a slightly unusual glue. Based on book age and the publisher involved you can even encounter similar smells looking at different copies of the same book at different libraries.
So yes a computer has a distinct smell the way a library does but that smell doesn’t change based on the knowledge you’re browsing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismell
I guess it never caught on (maybe the name :/). Following the first link it sounds like there are a few more that have tried something similar.
He captures that characteristic smell using a technique called enfleurage, soaking an old book in a neutral fat and then distilling it using a device called Rotaval.
He then pours some drops on thin wafers that resemble book pages.
Here is a short video describing the process: https://youtube.com/shorts/zN2uHgX0rRA
Walking into a library and smelling old books triggers the urge to defecate for me.
I can't tell if it's a statistically real effect. I had always told myself it was not real, but having heard of "Marikio Aoki" phenomenon for the first time just now, I'm wondering...
I liked it.
Dead Comment
http://wiki.winterthur.org/wiki/Poison_Book_Project
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/these-gre...
I dislike platitudes like these that don't acknowledge that life is about tradeoffs, and sometimes a little caution gives large rewards.
Dying of cancer is unique to every person and their cancer's progression. But, from my own experiences, dying of cancer is a fucking horrible way to go.
The pain is quite bad as it colonizes various nerve bundles and organs. Morphine only does so much and wanes as the person gets addicted to it and requires more and more to get the numbing results. As such, your mind goes with the morphine intake, a welcome relief really. You can lose function in your limbs and bowels too, though not always. You stop eating and drinking, but you don't stop thirst and hunger. Death really does become a welcome relief after enough weeks/months of this. Then there is the just normal health hazards and pains of laying down and generating filth. The rashes and sores, the muscle loss, the boredom. It's quite horrible. And that's with loving family members helping you at a moment's notice. One pro-tip here, if you can get a death doula.
Look, I get the sentiment here. Yes, live your life, don't worry so much about how it's going to end. There's likely nothing you could have done different anyway. Your end is going to really suck, no matter what. Better to have it be quick and as painless as possible.
But, I do want to advocate for taking common sense measures about carcinogen avoidance. Those are absolutely worth the time and effort. Do not smoke, don't have lead paint in your house, don't be stupid or lazy about getting these things away from you. Your future self will be very thankful you did that. I know, I've helped dying people who didn't.
Well, if you sit around all day and don't move much, sure. You will shorten your lifespan by a lot.
Or you'll live long, boring life anyways since you have good genes. Nothing in life is certain.
And indirectly, there seems to be agent spread on books you get from amazon too. I have an old 80s english CS book that smells too bad, so much i get a light headache. (not too far from what you get from some made in china plastics). It may be anti-fugal treatment.
I made up my own word for this, in Norwegian: 'Gammelbokduft'.
[0] https://earth.hoyd.net/lukten-av-gamle-boker-118/ [1] http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/57416/word-for-th...
In French maybe you can make it parfum de livre.
In the scribe days in England when literacy was exclusive and the texts and manuscripts were intricate and long-term artistic endeavors…
…the most frequent sealant used was sheep urine. IIRC. Basically there’s a LOT of reasons to wear gloves and a mask in the kind of places where they are stored for longevity.
Source: Early-Middle English course taught by an Oxford Man.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/arts/rare-books-white-glo...
[1] https://ask.loc.gov/preservation/faq/337286
Source: inducted to Sigma Tau Delta last semester I think to cover their ass if I do something great eventually. The only STD i knowingly have.