Exiled punk band says its members are proud to be branded ‘extremists’ and hits back at Putin as an ‘aging sociopath’.
A Moscow district court has designated Russian punk protest band Pussy Riot as an extremist organisation, according to the state TASS news agency.
The exiled group’s lawyer, Leonid Solovyov, told TASS that Monday’s court ruling was made in response to claims brought by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office and that the band plans to appeal. According to TASS, the case was heard in a closed session at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
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The court said that it had upheld prosecution submissions “to recognise the punk band Pussy Riot as an extremist organisation and ban its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation”, the AFP news agency reports.
An official Pussy Riot social media account shared a statement, responding defiantly to the ruling, saying the band’s members, who have lived in exile for years, were “freer than those who try to silence us”.
“We can say what I think about putin — that he is an aging sociopath spreading his venom around the world like cancer,” the statement said.
“In today’s Russia, telling the truth is extremism. So be it – we’re proud extremists, then.”
The group’s designation will make it easier for the authorities to go after the band’s supporters in Russia or people who have worked with them in the past.
“This court order is designed to erase the very existence of Pussy Riot from the minds of Russians,” the band said. “Owning a balaclava, having our song on your computer, or liking one of our posts could lead to prison time.”
According to TASS, earlier reports said that the Prosecutor General’s Office had brought the case over Pussy Riot’s previous actions, including at Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February 2012, and the World Cup Final in Moscow in 2018.
Today Russian court designated Pussy Riot as an extremist organization.
And yet, we’re freer than those who try to silence us. We can say what I think about putin — that he is an aging sociopath spreading his venom around the world like cancer. In today’s Russia, telling the… pic.twitter.com/ymz3BbApTo
The band’s members have already served sentences for the 2012 protest at the cathedral in Moscow, where they played what they called a punk prayer, “Mother of God, Cast Putin Out!”
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, who were jailed for two years on hooliganism charges over the cathedral protest, were released as part of a 2013 amnesty, which extended to some 26,000 people facing prosecution from Russian authorities, including 30 Greenpeace crew members.
In September, a Russian court handed jail terms to five people linked with Pussy Riot – Maria Alyokhina, Taso Pletner, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot and Alina Petrova – after finding them guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian military, news outlet Mediazona reported. All have said the charges against them are politically motivated.
Mediazona was founded by Alyokhina alongside fellow band member Tolokonnikova.
The news outlet says that it is continuing to maintain a verified list of Russian military deaths in Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
“We have confirmed 153,000 names, each supported by evidence, context, and documentation,” Mediazona said on Monday.
Following the news that Charlotte Stahl is leaving her position as TikTok’s Head of Music Partnerships for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Ollie Wards has announced he’s leaving the role of Director of Music for Australia and New Zealand.
“After an awesome 5.5 years, soon I’m hanging up my headphones at TikTok!” Wards wrote in a post on LinkedIn. He noted in the post that he is “open for business” in 2026. TikTok has not announced a successor to Wards.
Wards joined TikTok in 2020, having come over from triple j, Australia’s state-funded broadcaster aimed at a youth music audience – where he served in numerous roles, including producer, program director and network lead.
In his LinkedIn post, Wards listed off some of the accomplishments of his time at TikTok, including building a digital radio station in partnership with iHeart; creating the first TikTok x TV simulcasts; producing TikTok Awards performances; and producing the first TikTok stadium livestream with Six60 when New Zealand was one of the few places where concerts could be held during pandemic lockdowns.
“But rather than ‘what’ I was part of, it’s the ‘how’ I’m most proud of,” Wards wrote.
“One of the first things I did at TikTok was create ‘liner notes’. A list of 11 guiding principles… to work by. A set of stated values we’d aim to live up to in service of our artists, music industry and TikTok audience.
“In a world of increasingly opaque pathways for artists, pitch portals, helpdesks and bots – hopefully that approach of being a human amongst it all helped.”
Ollie Wards, TikTok
“For example, #3 liner note is: ‘We aim to be contactable, while being effective at scale and as transparent as possible with our artists and industry partners – the most ‘human’ team at a music platform.’”
“In a world of increasingly opaque pathways for artists, pitch portals, helpdesks and bots – hopefully that approach of being a human amongst it all helped. Though maybe being ‘human’ is the minimum.”
Wards’ announcement on Thursday (December 11) came a day after Charlotte Stahl announced on her own LinkedIn page that she is departing the role of Head of Music Partnerships for the EMEA region after a year-and-a-half in the position. TikTok hasn’t announced a replacement for Stahl’s role.
And both those departures take place in the shadow of Ole Obermannleaving his role as Global Head of Music Business Development at TikTok parent ByteDance, with Tracy Gardner taking on the role as of March of this year.
In April, Obermann joinedApple Music as Co-Head of the platform with Rachel Newman.Music Business Worldwide
At a meeting of his cabinet at the White House two weeks ago, US President Donald Trump looked around the long room filled with his top advisers, administration officials and aides, and made a prediction.
The next Republican presidential candidate, he said, is “probably sitting at this table”.
“It could be a couple of people sitting at this table,” he added, hinting at possible electoral clashes to come.
Despite a constitutional amendment limiting him to two four-year terms, his supporters chanted “four more years” at a rally last Tuesday night in Pennsylvania. Trump said at the time that the final three years of his second term amount to an “eternity”.
But in the cabinet room last week, when talking about prospects for the 2028 Republican president nomination, he was clear: “It’s not going to be me.”
The next presidential election may seem a long way off, but Trump’s own speculation – and certain frictions within Trump’s coalition – suggest that the jockeying to succeed and define the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement after Trump is well under way.
EPA/Shutterstock
At 78 when he was sworn in for the second time, Trump was the oldest person ever elected president – some media outlets suggested may be slowing him down; Trump called such speculation “seditious”
In last month’s local elections, the Republican Party lost support among the minority and working-class voters who helped Trump win back the White House in 2024.
Members of his team have feuded over policy. And some, most notably Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have cut loose from his orbit, accusing the president of losing touch with the Americans who gave him power.
There has been speculation about fractures within the Maga base in certain quarters of the international press, as well as at home. On Monday, a headline in The Washington Post asked: “Maga leaders warn Trump the base is checking out. Will he listen?”
The warning signs are there. While Trump has long been known for being in tune with his base, the months ahead will pose a series of challenges to the president and his movement. Nothing less than his political legacy is at stake.
From Vance to Rubio: A team of rivals?
It was all smiles and talk of historic presidential achievements inside the friendly confines of Trump’s newly redecorated, gold-bedecked cabinet room two weeks ago.
But the presidential aspirants Trump may have had in mind as he looked around the table hint at just how hard it could be to keep his Maga movement from stretching apart at the seams.
Vice-President JD Vance sat directly across from the president. As his running mate, he is widely considered to be Trump’s most likely heir apparent – the favourite of Trump’s sons and libertarian Silicon Valley tech billionaires.
Getty Images
Vance, more than perhaps anyone in Trump’s inner circle, is allied with those trying to give Trumpism an ideological foundation
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on the president’s immediate right. The former Florida senator, who competed with Trump for the Republican nomination in 2016, had spent the past 10 years undergoing a Maga transformation.
He has jettisoned his past support for liberalising immigration policy and his hard line on Russia in lieu of Trump’s America First foreign policy. But if there is anyone close to an old-guard Republican with influence in Trump’s party, Rubio tops the list.
Then there is Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, whose vaccine scepticism and “Make America Healthy Again” agenda have sent earthquakes through the US health bureaucracy; he sat two down from Rubio. The Democrat-turned-independent-turned-Republican is a living embodiment of the strange ideological bedfellows Trump made on his way to re-election last year.
And finally, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, was tucked off to the corner of the table. While the former South Dakota governor is not considered a major presidential contender, her advocacy for aggressive immigration enforcement – including a recent call for a full travel ban on “every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies” – has made her a prominent face of administration’s policies.
Reuters
The jockeying to succeed and define the Maga movement after Trump is already under way
Each might believe they could, if they chose to run, become Trump’s political heir and take control of the political movement that has reshaped American politics over the last decade.
But to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin’s comments at the birth of American democracy, whoever wins the Republican nomination will have been given a winning coalition – if they can keep it.
The Republican empire transformed
Of course none of this is guaranteed – nor is it certain that the next generation of Maga leaders will be someone from the president’s inner circle. Trump stormed the White House as a political outsider. The next Republican leader may follow a similar path.
“It’s going to be up to the next Republican president who follows Trump to set him or herself apart,” says former Republican Congressman Rodney Davis of Illinois, who now works for the US Chamber of Commerce.
“But at the same time make sure that you don’t go too far away, because clearly it’s Donald Trump [who] got elected president twice.”
When the November 2028 presidential election rolls around, American voters may not even want someone like Trump. Some public opinion polls suggest that the president may not be as popular as he once was.
A survey by YouGov earlier this month indicated the president had a net approval rating of -14, compared with +6 when he took office again in January. Then there are concerns about the economy and his relentless efforts to push the boundaries of presidential power.
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Leadership of Trump’s movement still represents the keys to the Republican empire
Leadership of Trump’s movement still represents the keys to the Republican empire, however, even if that empire has drastically changed in recent years.
“I think the Republican coalition has become fundamentally different over the last few decades,” said Davis, who served in Congress from 2013 to 2023. “The Republican coalition that existed when Ronald Reagan was elected is not the Republican coalition anymore.”
Back in the 1980s, the Reagan coalition was a fusion of free-market economics, cultural conservatism, anti-communism and international foreign affairs, says Laura K Field, author of Furious Minds: The Making of the Maga New Right.
Trump’s party, she continues, was perhaps best described by long-time Trump adviser and current state department official Michael Anton in a 2016 essay advocating for Trump’s election. In contrast with the Reagan era, its core principles include “secure borders, economic nationalism and America-first foreign policy”.
‘Normie Republicans’ versus ‘the edgelords’
Earlier this month, the conservative Manhattan Institute released a comprehensive survey of Republican voters, shedding more light on the composition of Trump’s coalition.
It suggested that 65% of the current Republican Party are what it calls “core Republicans” – those who have supported party presidential nominees since at least 2016. (If they were alive in the 1980s, they may well have voted for Reagan.)
On the other hand, 29% are what the Institute called “new entrant Republicans”. It is among those new Republicans that the challenge to the durability of Trump’s coalition presents itself.
Only just over half said they would “definitely” support a Republican in next year’s mid-term congressional elections.
According to the survey, the new entrants are younger, more diverse and more likely to hold views that break with traditional conservative orthodoxy. They hold comparatively more left-leaning views of economic policy, they tend to be more liberal on immigration and social issues, and they may also be more pro-China or critical of Israel, for example.
AFP via Getty Images
Trump was able to attract ‘new entrant Republican’ voters into his coalition – the question is whether he and his political heirs can keep them, or if they even want to
Jesse Arm, vice-president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, told the BBC in an email: “A lot of the conversation about the future of the right is being driven by the loudest and strangest voices online, rather than by the voters who actually make up the bulk of the Republican coalition.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, the so-called new entrant Republican voters are significantly less supportive of some of Trump’s would-be heirs. While 70% of core Republicans have positive views of Rubio and 80% for Vance, just over half of new entrants feel that way about either.
Other findings could be more concerning for Republicans.
More than half of new entrants believe the use of political violence in American politics “is sometimes justified” – compared to just 20% among core Republicans.
It also suggests they may be more likely to be tolerant of racist or anti-Semitic speech and more prone to conspiratorial thinking – on topics like the moon landings, 9/11 and vaccines.
Trump was able to attract these voters into his coalition. The question is whether he and his political heirs can keep them there – or if they even want to.
“The real takeaway is not that these voters will ‘define’ the post-Trump GOP, but that future Republican leaders will have to draw clear lines about who sets the agenda,” argues Mr Arm.
“The heart of the party remains normie Republicans, not the edgelords that both the media and the dissident right are strangely invested in elevating.”
Clashes in the conservative ranks
The divides revealed in the Manhattan Institute poll helps explain some of the most notable frictions within the Trump coalition over the past few months.
The Trump-Greene feud that culminated in the latter’s resignation from Congress began with her backing of a full release of the government files connected to the Jeffrey Epstein underage sex-trafficking case – long a source of conservative conspiracy theories.
It broadened, however, into a critique of Trump’s Middle East policy and accusations of his failure to address cost-of-living and healthcare concerns for low-income American voters.
An earlier high-profile Maga split erupted over Trump’s economic policy, with billionaire Elon Musk, a strong supporter and member of Trump’s inner circle at the start of the year, going on to condemn certain tariffs and government spending policies.
Reuters
An earlier high-profile Maga split erupted over Trump’s economic policy
The president has, for the moment, largely tried to stay out of another bitter clash within conservative ranks over whether Nick Fuentes, a far-right political commentator and Holocaust denier, is welcome within the conservative movement.
It’s a dispute that has roiled the influential Heritage Foundation and pitted some powerful right-wing commentators against each other.
According to Ms Field, those who follow Trump may find it a difficult conflict to avoid. “Nick Fuentes has a huge following,” she says. “Part of how the conservative movement got the energy and power that they’ve got is by peddling to this part of the Republican Party.”
In the halls of the Republican-controlled Congress, some signs of friction with the president’s agenda are showing. Despite White House lobbying, it couldn’t stop the House from passing a measure mandating release of the Epstein files.
The president has also been unable to convince Senate Republicans to abandon the filibuster, a parliamentary procedure Democrats in the minority have been able to block some of Trump’s agenda.
AFP via Getty Images
Even a defeat next year – or in 2028 – is unlikely to mark the end of Trumpism
Meanwhile, Trump’s party has been stumbling at the polls, with the Democrats winning governorships in Virginia and New Jersey last month by comfortable margins.
In dozens of contested special elections for state and local seats over the past year, Democrats have on average improved their margins by around 13% over similar races held in last November’s national elections.
The future of Trumpism
All of this will be front of mind for Republicans ahead of the 2026 mid-term congressional elections – and it will do little to ease the concerns held by some that, without Trump at the top of the ticket, their coalition will struggle to deliver reliable ballot-box victories.
Yet even a defeat next year – or in 2028 – is unlikely to mark the end of Trumpism.
The ascent by Trump’s Maga movement to the pinnacle of American power has been far from a smooth one. It includes a mid-term rout in 2018 and Trump himself losing in 2020, before his re-election last November.
But the changes that Trump has wrought within the Republican Party itself appear to be foundational ones, according to Ms Field. His Maga coalition builds on strains of populist movements in the US that date back decades or more – from Barry Goldwater’s insurgent presidential campaign in 1964 to the Tea Party protests during Barack Obama’s presidency.
“These things are not coming out of nowhere. They are forces in American politics that have been underground for a while, but have been just kind of fermenting.”
The old Republican order, she argues, is a relic of the past.
“The Trump movement is here to stay and there’s no real likelihood of the old establishment returning with any sort of clout – that much is clear.”
Top picture credit: Getty Images
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“It’s a day that I think we were all dreading in the Jewish community. It was the day that we had, I suppose, in many ways, warned government and higher authorities of the possibility and the risk. And it feels almost like we were unheard, almost invisible.” “This was a massacre, a pogrom here in our city, here at one of our most cherished landmarks, Bondi Beach. Lives shattered irrevocably in a single moment. Young children, who from this point forward, will never have a father. Parents who have lost their beloved 10-year-old daughter. This is the moment we’ve arrived at. This isn’t something we should ever have seen in Australia.” “I think everyone knew this was going to happen sooner or later with the trajectory that we were on as a society, but for it to actually happen here at our Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach, which every year is just the most beautiful family event with kids running around and — it’s a celebration.” “Eli was a really wonderful, warm, caring, vivacious, energetic, outgoing guy, who loved people, loved doing good, loved caring for other people. The instant reaction like so many other human beings, is pointing fingers at whoever you might point fingers at with anxiety. Why aren’t the media raising the concerns of the Jewish community? Why aren’t governments understanding the way we feel and the threats that we face? We feel lonely. And then my brain says, no, stop. I’m a rabbi. I’m not a politician. My job is to spread goodness. I know this is what Eli would be saying.”
Morocco has earned itself a spot in the FIFA Arab Cup final after soundly defeating the UAE 3-0 in Monday’s semi-final at Khalifa International Stadium in Qatar.
When the CFO Alliance, a finance-professional peer community, released its latest report, called Project Greenlight, in late November, the organization said that finance experts expect 2026 to be “the most pivotal year the finance function has faced in a decade.” There’s a lot at stake for CFOs and their organizations, according to the report, including supply-chain risks, pressure to make big AI investments, and the perils of stakeholder misalignment on strategy.
CFO Brew recently spoke with Nick Araco, the CEO of CFO Alliance, to get a sense of why 2026 is shaping up to be a high-stakes year. He also shared what’s top of mind for the finance leaders he’s been speaking with.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What makes you think that 2026 will be such a pivotal year in finance?
2026 has to be a year where we replace debate with data and execution. I call it “informed execution.” We’ve seen such a rapid acceleration, given AI and technology advancements, converge with a year of volatility and uncertainty. Imagine you’re sitting in the seat of a CFO, where you’re at the intersection of that, and you’ve had a 2025 that’s caused you and your enterprises to hit a pause button. You had months, if not a whole year of pause. 2026 has to be a year of execution.
How did the group that worked on the Project Greenlight report identify the top execution risks, and how did it lay out a roadmap for addressing each?
What we did was convene about an hour-and-a-half’s time and openly debated until we got to a point where we agreed on the most material and critical areas of risk. You can imagine we started with a laundry list, because the CFO Alliance population of almost 10,000 or more is very diverse…At the end of the day, we identified four execution risks that most often stall plans, or stall action. [According to the report, these are geopolitical and regulatory disruption, technology and AI adoption, talent and team capabilities, and stakeholder alignment and governance.]
I want to focus on one specific risk: AI adoption. What would you say are the keys to identifying where an organization should be investing its money, but also how to track the ROI?
A year ago at this time, I would tell you that nine out of 10 of our members were saying, ‘We agree, it’s time to lean in, and it’s time to have the right discussions. Let’s bring in cross-functional leaders and cross-level leaders, and let’s make sure we are demonstrating comfort, and make sure that we’re demonstrating through our own actions, an embrace.’ Let me fast forward to where we are in 2025. These discussions need to be about enterprise value and performance. They need to be about, ‘How would this impact our business?’
I’m going to be very specific as to what the discussions need to be and are, because our members are using the following framework around AI. “What’s the specific opportunity or pain point that we are attempting to address…when it comes to AI? Why does it matter now? What’s blocking our progress that we’re even having this discussion? What’s one condition, and if we solve for this, what would be different by X date, and how would we know it helped us?” Those questions they’re using in every conversation, so they can tie it back to value.
What have been the biggest recurring topics in your conversations with CFOs from the past two or three months?
There are three key areas of focus: What type of leader do I want to be in ’26? How do I best stand up the highest performing finance function? And that includes accounting, treasury, FP&A, and capital markets or strategy functions. And then, from an enterprise standpoint, am I really at the forefront of understanding how technology and AI may disrupt our position in our industry, or our industry or business as a whole?
Standing up a high-performing finance function and team [is] more complex than ever before. I’m tired of the bashing of accounting…No one can do their job in finance without a strong accounting function. We’re done complaining about it; we’re going to do something about it. We’re going to try to make accounting sexy again by embracing the AI factor and bringing critical thinking into the accounting skill set.
Having begun his career at middleweight before campaigning across four additional divisions up to heavyweight, James Toney faced more than his share of big punchers.
Yet it was back at 160lbs, early in his career, where Toney believes he faced the hardest puncher, pound-for-pound. Speaking to The Ring for their “Best I Faced” series, Toney identified the 25th opponent of his career – a 1991 meeting in Atlantic City.
“Sam Peter is the hardest puncher I’ve fought, but pound-for-pound it’s Sosa because he hurt me the most. I’ll never forget that fight, we fought on an ESPN show in Atlantic City on a Sunday.
“I went at him like I did everyone back then and that mother f***** hit me so hard in the third round I was seeing triple for the next three rounds. He knew how to hit and he was so awkward that I couldn’t time him and he caught me high on the head.”
Toney dropped Sosa in the third round and ultimately edged him on a split decision. Later that same year, ‘Lights Out’ captured his first world title, stopping Michael Nunn in the 11th round to claim the IBF middleweight belt.
Sosa fought 45 times in his career which spanned from 1987 to 2000, winning 34 of those fights. 27 of them came by knockout, displaying the power that Toney discussed.
Could you imagine being able to “feel” the images on your screen? UCSB researchers have made this sci-fi-like idea a reality. They’ve developed a display where pixels physically rise off the surface when activated by laser light.
Even our most advanced screens today have a limitation that makes them distinctly still feel like, well, screens: they’re flat. They can display entire worlds with a level of detail that just a couple of decades ago was incomprehensible, but we never quite feel what we see. That missing sense may be the next frontier between digital images and physical experience.
Laser pulses can push the surface upward by about a millimeter
UCSB Engineering department
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) may have found a way across that frontier by turning light itself into touch. Their new display technology is made up of tiny pixels that rise into little bumps when they’re struck by controlled pulses of laser light. Images are given a whole new dimension; they literally lift off the surface, forming shapes you can trace with your fingertips.
It’s a compelling concept. What if anything you could see on a screen, you could also feel?
In 2021, UCSB professor Yon Visell challenged PhD researcher Max Linnander to investigate this very question: could light be made tactile?
Leading the research in Professor Visell’s RE Touch Lab, and under his guidance, Linnander saw a breakthrough in late 2022. A single pixel popped upward under a flash of laser light, sending a tactile pulse that was very much noticeable to Professor Visell’s fingertips. “That was a special moment – the moment we knew the core idea could work,” Visell said. A single pixel was enough to prove that touchable graphics might be possible just by shining light.
Millimeter-scale pixels lift into bumps when lit up by a focused laser pulse
UCSB Engineering department
At the heart of this invention are tiny optotactile pixels, which are millimeter-scale cells built with a thin graphite film stretched above a small air cavity. When a quick pulse of laser light hits a pixel, the film heats up, causing the trapped air to expand, making the surface bulge upward for a split second, by about a millimeter (0.04 in).
“The pixels respond very rapidly, so what one feels is quite crisp in time” Visell explained to New Atlas. “While the pixels deflect outward, this occurs very rapidly. The sensation is not one of a bump, but rather of a small animated haptic quantum under your finger.”
Since the laser beam offers both power and control, the surface doesn’t need any wires or other additional electronics under each pixel. A scanning system sweeps the light across the array at high speed, activating one pixel after another.
The current optotactile system in operation
UCSB Engineering department
So far, the UCSB team has built arrays with over 1,500 independently-activated tactile pixels that respond in just 2 to 100 milliseconds. That level of responsiveness means that moving shapes and characters always seem smooth, and never feel choppy or laggy.
This high-density, high-speed setup could open the door to an entirely new form of tactile storytelling. Test users could follow a moving bump across their screens, identify shapes and spatial layouts, and perceive sequences over time (essentially, tactile animation).
Conceptually, it’s a simple interface; but it already feels like the surface is “alive” under your hands.
As a sighted person, it does initially feel like a delightful novelty: game interfaces that literally push back, or maps where you can feel the elevation of contour lines. But the more I think about it, the more it feels like it could have profound potential for people who navigate the world through touch.
Imagine reading a science textbook where the diagrams reshape themselves under your fingertips, or a map that guides you along raised paths that move as directions change.
This begins to look like a sort of “animated Braille” – tactile information that updates, morphs, and tells a story in real-time. It could make digital learning faster and richer for blind users who currently rely on static tactile graphics that either can’t adapt on the fly, or can only do so under rigid constraints.
A 3D Tactile Fine Art Print of “George Washington Crossing The Delaware.” Unlike this static rendition, optotactile pixels could dynamically recreate tactile versions of countless such works of art.
3DPhotoWorks
Larger displays could bring this into everyday settings, too. Car dashboards with controls that only appear when they’re needed, schoolbooks and maps that physically animate concepts.
When we reached out to Professor Visell, he spoke of one entirely different, and particularly interesting use case: enabling large-scale architectural walls that integrate optotactile pixels. The possibilities are endless, and despite how sci-fi it may seem, it’s not far out of reach.
“[Architectural walls] in offices, homes, or hospitals – that integrate interactive, haptic displays, reconfigurable controllers, or interfaces,” he said by way of example. “This possibility is relevant because the complexity of our technology remains manageable as the display dimensions, and number of pixels, grow, and because of the low cost of the materials. One can reproduce our research prototypes, even in bespoke form, for low hundreds of dollars.”
A paper on the research project has been published in the journal Science Robotics.
The invention is currently in its infancy, and there are challenges ahead: managing heat, ensuring durability, and scaling the resolution to match the multi-million pixel displays we’re used to. But the trajectory feels promising.
Touch and sight have always lived in separate digital worlds. We input with touch, and consume outputs with sight. With optotactile pixels, this separation may just be narrowing. As the UCSB researchers put it, someday soon, anything you see, you may also feel.
