New technology uses human body for broadband networking

From: Dr. Jai Maharaj (usenet_at_mantra.com)
Date: 03/21/05 

Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 11:50:17 GMT

New technology uses human body for broadband networking

By Paul Rubens
Taipei Times
Sunday, March 20, 2005

By sending data over the surface of the skin, it may soon
be possible to trade music files by dancing cheek to
cheek, or to swap phone numbers by kissing.

Your body could soon be the backbone of a broadband
personal data network linking your mobile phone or MP3
player to a cordless headset, your digital camera to a PC
or printer, and all the gadgets you carry around to each
other.

These personal area networks are already possible using
radio-based technologies, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, or
just plain old cables to connect devices. But NTT, the
Japanese communications company, has developed a
technology called RedTacton, which it claims can send
data over the surface of the skin at speeds of up to
2Mbps -- equivalent to a fast broadband data connection.

Using RedTacton-enabled devices, music from an MP3 player
in your pocket would pass through your clothing and shoot
over your body to headphones in your ears. Instead of
fiddling around with a cable to connect your digital
camera to your computer, you could transfer pictures just
by touching the PC while the camera is around your neck.
And since data can pass from one body to another, you
could also exchange electronic business cards by shaking
hands, trade music files by dancing cheek to cheek, or
swap phone numbers just by kissing.

NTT is not the first company to use the human body as a
conduit for data: IBM pioneered the field in 1996 with a
system that could transfer small amounts of data at very
low speeds, and last June, Microsoft was granted a patent
for "a method and apparatus for transmitting power and
data using the human body."

But RedTacton is arguably the first practical system
because, unlike IBM's or Microsoft's, it doesn't need
transmitters to be in direct contact with the skin --
they can be built into gadgets, carried in pockets or
bags, and will work within about 20cm of your body.
RedTacton doesn't introduce an electric current into the
body -- instead, it makes use of the minute electric
field that occurs naturally on the surface of every human
body. A transmitter attached to a device, such as an MP3
player, uses this field to send data by modulating the
field minutely in the same way that a radio carrier wave
is modulated to carry information.

Receiving data is more complicated because the strength
of the electric field involved is so low. RedTacton gets
around this using a technique called electric field
photonics: A laser is passed though an electro-optic
crystal, which deflects light differently according to
the strength of the field across it. These deflections
are measured and converted back into electrical signals
to retrieve the transmitted data.

An obvious question, however, is why anyone would bother
networking though their body when proven radio-based
personal area networking technologies, such as Bluetooth,
already exist? Tom Zimmerman, the inventor of the
original IBM system, says body-based networking is more
secure than broadcast systems, such as Bluetooth, which
have a range of about 10m.

"With Bluetooth, it is difficult to rein in the signal
and restrict it to the device you are trying to connect
to," says Zimmerman. "You usually want to communicate
with one particular thing, but in a busy place there
could be hundreds of Bluetooth devices within range."

As human beings are ineffective aerials, it is very hard
to pick up stray electronic signals radiating from the
body, he says. "This is good for security because even if
you encrypt data it is still possible that it could be
decoded, but if you can't pick it up it can't be
cracked."

Zimmerman also believes that, unlike infrared or
Bluetooth phones and PDAs, which enable people to "beam"
electronic business cards across a room without ever
formally meeting, body-based networking allows for more
natural interchanges of information between humans.

"If you are very close or touching someone, you are
either in a busy subway train, or you are being intimate
with them, or you want to communicate," he says. "I think
it is good to be close to someone when you are exchanging
information."

RedTacton transceivers can be treated as standard network
devices, so software running over Ethernet or other
TCP/IP protocol-based networks will run unmodified.

Gordon Bell, a senior researcher at Microsoft's Bay Area
Research Center in San Francisco, says that while
Bluetooth or other radio technologies may be perfectly
suitable to link gadgets for many personal area
networking purposes, there are certain applications for
which RedTacton technology would be ideal.

"I recently acquired my own in-body device -- a pacemaker
 -- but it takes a special radio frequency connector to
interface to it. As more and more implants go into
bodies, the need for a good Internet Protocol connection
increases," he says.

In the near future, the most important application for
body-based networking may well be for communications
within, rather than on the surface of, or outside, the
body.

An intriguing possibility is that the technology will be
used as a sort of secondary nervous system to link large
numbers of tiny implanted components placed beneath the
skin to create powerful onboard -- or in-body --
computers.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2005/03/20/2003247076

Posted on 3/21/2005 3:37:20 AM PST by ajolympian2004

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 -To: ajolympian2004

"I recently acquired my own in-body device -- a pacemaker
 -- but it takes a special radio frequency connector to
 interface to it. As more and more implants go into
 bodies, the need for a good Internet Protocol connection
 increases," he says.

Just wait until a hacker unleashes a computer virus into your pacemaker.

Posted on 3/21/2005 3:44:49 AM PST by SpyGuy
 (Liberalism is slow societal suicide. And screw
   political correctness: Islam is the Religion of Death)

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 End of forwarded messages

Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti

Hindu Holocaust Museum
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The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate

The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:

     "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
     "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
     "And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
 - Matthew 10:34-36.

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