The failed quest to bring smells to the internet

That said, the technology seems kind of cool. The idea that we could define a set of primitive smells, then combine them into any other arbitrary smell is fascinating. If you have the binary data from an image file, and you know how to decode it, you can preserve a photograph forever -- potentially for thousands of years -- with no degradation. It would be really great to be able to preserve scents for posterity in the same way.

When it comes to the average consumer, however, I can't see this ever taking off for a couple reasons:

1. Smell is one of our least important senses - while it might help immersion, very little of our information about our world comes through our noses, comparatively speaking. There are many, many subjects that might be improved to provide better immersion than scents, which are, ultimately, optional.

2. On a related note, smell is a less developed sense. The amount of bandwidth our noses provide is massively limited, unlike audio or visual effects. Additionally, multiple smells in a short timeframe will interfere with each other, preventing more complex arrangements. This means there is less design space for creators to use and consumers to experience.

3. Because of this, most people's olfactory needs can be satisfied with less difficulty at a lower cost. Rather than purchasing an expensive device that requires power and refills, you can just get an air freshener. Novelty and variety in smells is much less of a priority than simple maintenance of a pleasant base standard.

In the long term, I'm sure smell simulation will be achieved for VR-style experiences - but almost certainly not through these devices. As long as there's no simulation of motion, or, less importantly, touch, immersion will not be complete enough for lack of smell to be a notable factor. I expect that all three of these senses will become available when we're able to manipulate them more directly - attaching to the nerves, or perhaps via neural implants, as any physical measures for motion or touch are crude and generally ineffective - and that olfactory devices will see negligible success in the meantime, until they're obsoleted.

If anything, it'd be really cool to smell totally novel things that are unlike any other scent you've experienced.

Smell has a negative connotation. Scent is generally more pleasant in my opinion. Perhaps it was a marketing blunder.

iScents has both the double entendre and 90s cachet for the "i-thing" naming convention craze.

I wait until some algorithm accidentally mismatches a vegetarian with Hard 7 BBQ. That would be an interesting lawsuit.

Regarding the failure, Brain wave input as well as VR are actively developed. Touch/feedback interfaces have been common in consoles for ages. But smell is kind of underrepresented. There is this though: https://kotaku.com/tecmo-is-making-dead-or-alive-you-can-sme...

The critical question is obviously: can you make such a good product that the public actually changes its mind?!