Anticipation, expectation and randomness: the example of touch

Touch feels different when it has a random component, an unexpected component. When I expect my hand to be touched, it feels different to me than when I do not expect it. If I expect my arm to be pressed, but instead it is stroked, the stroking feels different to me. If I do not know exactly how your hands will massage a muscle, the massage feels different to me. 

Touch feels different when the body cannot completely predict its next state. Unpredictability changes the qualitative character of touch, not merely its intensity. Randomness changes touch from a predictable sensation into an unfolding event. A variable touch is perceived not only as pressure on the body, but as a sequence of possibilities. 

Uncertainty extends touch into anticipation, and part of the sensation occurs before contact.  

Next Time:  

Do we create internal anticipatory models to prepare for expected touch? Do we create internal anticipatory spaces in which perceived events will be unfolded? Is the unanticipated event enhanced, amplified, changed, when the anticipatory structures are primed and models foiled?  

How can the infrastructure of anticipation be hacked to derive sensations? How can it be gamed? How can it be sublimated for art? 

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[Concept fields: anticipation, touch as metaphor, touch, internal representation, uncertainty, indeterminacy, social lives of infinite systems, unfolding, unfolding space, habituation, randomization, stochastic, pseudorandom, random access, attention, attentional systems]

If you would like to reference this page, here is an APA Style citation:

Smith, T. (2026). Anticipation, expectation and randomness: the example of touch. Small-Infinities. https://small-infinities.com/surfaces/anticipation-expectation-and-randomness-the-example-of-touch