The future of information transfer

This is crazy. Taken from the Times today:

July 14, 2005

Human body is the best computer, say scientists
From Leo Lewis in Tokyo

IF YOU spend hours downloading songs to your iPod, the days of fiddling
around with wires are coming to an end. A Japanese company has discovered
that the best cables may be your arms and legs.

According to NTT Laboratories, your whole body is the perfect conductor for
electronic data, meaning that information such as music and films could be
downloaded in seconds via your elbow.

NTT, the Japanese telecoms group, and the team of scientists that invented
the Red Tacton system, envisage a future in which the human body acts as a
non-stop conduit for information. Wireless networks — often hampered by
intermittent service — will eventually be replaced, NTT says, by “human area
networks”.

The developers are convinced that the new technology will be “highly
disruptive” — undermining existing wireless industries and causing everyone
to rethink the way that everyday actions could be undertaken. Field tests
are under way and the first commercial appearance of Red Tacton is expected
next year.

The Red Tacton chips will be embedded in machines and contain a transmitter
and receiver built to send and accept any form of data stored in a digital
format. The chip then takes any type of file — such as an MP3 music file or
e-mail — and converts it into digital pulses that can be passed and read
through a human being’s electric field. The chip in the receiving device
reads these tiny changes and converts the file back into its original form.

With Red Tacton sensors miniaturised and built into every type of device and
product, the list of potential uses is endless, Hideki Sakamoto, of NTT,
said during an exclusive demonstration for The Times. By simply touching an
advertising poster, for example, product information and an order form could
be sent to your laptop. Shake hands with a new contact, and every detail
that would normally appear on a business card will leap across your arms and
download itself to your mobile phone.

Dr Sakamoto’s Red Tacton takes advantage of the long-overlooked electric
field that surrounds the human body. Other researchers, including IBM, have
tried and failed to harness the power of this minute and unstable flow of
current across the skin, but NTT’s approach during the past five years of
research has been different. Rather than attempting to use the body’s
natural electricity itself, Red Tacton exploits the tiny variations in the
overall field and the way in which they affect highly sensitive lasers —
changes that are collected by the “electro-optic crystal” that represents
the key to the entire technology.

These minute fluctuations can be converted, then transmitted and read as
digital messages, meaning that no current passes along the body.

Because the data transfer between Red Tacton machines involves no dial-up or
logging-in, the transfer of information is virtually instantaneous.

 

Wow! Japanese scientist did another amazing achievemnt. I never thought a human body could be used as electronic conductors or transmitters someday.

 

There's been a group of MIT professors that since 1995 have intergrated and worn computer parts full time kind of like cyborgs. I remember reading it in Discovery a year ago.

It's only a matter of time before people are transferring data dirrectly into their brains. I mean the brain runs on electrical impulses so at the end of the day it's just a matter of being able to format the data change like a piece of paper being turned into a fax and sent over a phone line. Then we'll have a whole slew of Cyborgs running around and Jean Cluade Van Dam won't be able to stop them this time.

 

I remember seeing similar things in discovery' s techtrix program. They said in future confidential information will be trasferred from one person to another just by a casual shake-hand and no body will notice it.

Wonder how this will be exploited by terrorists.

 

Yes, bound to be limitless ways for this to be misused

As discussed on my blog, right here!

How's that for self promotion?

 

www.redtacton.com .. it really amazing