swamp’s improvised empathetic device is a close cousin of philip k. dick’s empathy machine: a way to stay in contact with humanity’s greater suffering through direct physical empathy – in this case administered by an armband with a needle on a solenoid. the ied pricks you every time a soldier dies in iraq – presumably because it would be too intrusive if it pricked you for each of the civilians killed. another nice touch in this design is the circuit board in the shape of iraq – a way for expert-designed and typically cryptic hardware to serve as an intuitive interface.
