Economist (Jul 3, 04) has a story on Microsoft’s patent (# 6,754,472) for a “method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body”.
 

Microsoft is proposing to use the skin’s own conductive properties to transmit the data needed to create a ‘personal area network’ (PAN) to allow people to link their personal electronic devices such as cell phones, PDAs. Microsoft also says that a wide variety of living animals can be used to create computer buses. It feels that skin can be used as a keyboard too. It does not end here: the body can also act as power generator for network - a ‘kinetic power converter’ in the wearer’s shoe or wristwatch can produce electricity in the same way as an old-fashioned self-winding watch extracted energy from its owner’s manual movements.
 

Microsoft is not the pioneer in this field. MIT’s Media Lab and IBM jointly developed an idea of using the human body as a PAN nearly a decade ago. They showed how two people could transmit their business card info electronically via a handshake.
 

Environmentalists will be waiting for the day when networking devices containing polluting lead and silicon are replaced by biodegradable human bodies.

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3 Comments:

⋅ skin as a conductor / generator - Ayn Rand described this idea in detail in Atlas Shrugged. The powers-that-be had put John Galt into a contraption ...

⋅ so what does that say about circumcision and its impact on a person's ability to produce power, or plug-in into various PANs ?

By  hariputtar, at 1:23 AM  

testing: what happened to my earlier comment ? are comments being screened ?

By  hariputtar, at 1:56 AM  

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

By  Anonymous, at 2:38 PM  

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