Prefacing this with credit, I found this thanks to a post by Cory Silverberg, and you should totally visit the store he helps run, Come As You Are, because it's awesome.

I usually concentrate on technological advancements in porn here, but this book caught my eye due to the interesting questions of sensation and perception.

Normally, when people think of porn, it's audio or visual stimulus. Magazines, movies, et cetera. When we talk about haptics in relation to teledildonics and sex technology, it's usually accompanying game, webcam, or movie synchronized toys. These technologies combine haptics with the aforementioned delivery methods, to augment them instead of standing on their own.

So what's the stand alone haptic equivilent of Playboy/Playgirl? That's what Tactile Mind, a book of erotic textures, seems to be trying to find out. Basically, it's images that've been texturized so that they can be felt instead of seen.

Above: Sample image, "Naked Woman with Birthday Streamers"

I've always been interested in pure haptic representations of scenes like this. If you close your eyes and just feel something, what do you expect out of it? The questions of texture, temperature, size, and other qualities are just huge and unanswered. There's relatively little we achieve with haptic stimulation through technological means right now (we've been happy with vibrational force feedback for 20+ years now, after all, and we're just getting to multitouch...), most of which are geared toward controls. There's been lots of talk about things like mood sensing braclets and hug jackets, both then and now (Side note: Talk To My Shirt is a great place for news on stuff like that), but those involving clothing, other people, other senses, and technology. I'm rather fascinated by the naturalness of this, and how effective it is versus whatever other nerdy means we might come up with.

The book itself is a bit more expensive ($225CDN for 17 pages) than your run of the mill porn mag, but that's to be expected for the hand-crafting time that goes into thermoform book publishing, I'm sure. You can also order single plates from the website for $25CDN.