While selecting an area of one of my photographs, cursing my laziness for not improving my mouse to be able to handle the fine muscle control I needed, it occured to me that it would be a lot easier following a zones perimeter if I had some sort of force feedback. If the texture beneath my mouse changed as the colours changed. What is needed, is a tablet with a surface which can change its friction. Such a material exists: chalk. Under the influence of electricity, damp chalk changes its modolus of friction. This was exploited in a telephone receiver design of Edison's, during the lengthy lawsuits over the critical patents controlling telephony. Probably a number of other materials exhibit this property - this may be fertile ground for some experiments.
Force feedback input devices seem primarly concerned with reading stylus pressure to perform various tasks like line width, line density, colour. Outputting force to the controller seems to be restricted to the 'bump-n-go' style demands of the rumblepack video game controller.

A pity, really. I could work so much faster if I could actually feel the edges of the colour fields.

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