I await the Hollywood thriller where the killer overrides the shirt's safety blocks(1) and "hugs" his prey to a horrible, suffocating death.

1) Probably by re-routing power through the phase couplers.

I think I saw that once in Columbo and George Hamilton was the guest killer.

*hugs iconomy, gets shocked by weird-looking shirt, cries*

So, I am thinking that, with some careful adaptation, maybe we could modify these to have sex with someone in a different city.

The future where we never have to have physical contact with or actually speak to another human approaches. I can hardly wait.

shit, i've been there for 4 years. just got back, actually.

In these strategic spots we placed our soft technological sandwiches containing the hugging output actuators.

'Technological sandwiches'? No shit, Zippy? 'Hugging output actuators'? 'Gobble, Gobble, we accept you'?

Users tried at first different kind of fabric and materials wearing them on their body, inside their clothes or outside existing ones, some slept with soft furry sponges, other have been squeezing tiny cushions for hours, others explored the oddity of inflating balloons under their shirts and others liked it very much.

'Soft, furry sponges' you say? 'Tiny cushions', nudge-nudge say no more! Liked it very much indeed!

That wasn't a research/design focus group. That a was a street brawl between a balloon-fetish interest group and a herd of furries.

can't help it, every time i look at that page i see a generation of flinchy children
i'm part of one already because of beeping alarms and phones

and i'd rather they worked on armor and foundation garments
dialing in affection has such bizarre implications
no matter what, the first use of any medium is porn

i remember friendship contracts in an old sci fi story that made better sense then the directions this thing point at