Microsoft this week patented a technique describing the “method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body”. Basically, they intend to use live bodies as a data bus for transmitting data to local devices – your watch, for example.
The network requires “a body of a living creature for coupling the first device to the second device and for conducting the electrical signal” in order to operate.The envisaged system is intended to reduce much of the redundancy between the devices you carry around with you today – your PDA, phone and MP3 player all require battery power, plus much of the gear you have on you at any one time has a speaker or a display or its own keyboard. Microsoft want to take out this duplication and distribute it around you, with devices communicating by sending electrical signals, well, there no nice way of putting this: through your living flesh.
I hope they nail down the security on this far tighter than they do on their operating systems because it could could bring a whole new meaning to “port sniffing” if hackers managed to get into it.
I think I’ll stick to Bluetooth for the time being, thank you – at least if I suffer a seizure when my mobile rings, it’s only because it’s Simon chasing an article.