Personal Aura Networking?

Just caught up on The Economist’s latest Technology Quarterly, and found an interesting story: NTT have a “RedTacton” technology that induces tiny fluctuations in the body’s natural electric field. They claim they can get 10 megabits per second, which is as good as most home Ethernets today.

This could be handy: just wave your hand over a sensor and the server in your pocket acts as keyring and unlocks a door for you. That’s even better than the skin-based data transmission, which is much slower and less hygienic when used by crowds. (I’m expecting telecommuting to take off in a big way when the next pandemic hits.)

It’ll also be good for “personal area networking” (or “personal aura networking”, as I’m sure this will be dubbed). Right now, if you want to have all your devices talk to each other, you’re pretty much stuck with Bluetooth, which means interference with everyone else’s favorite use of unlicensed 2.4GHz spectrum: Wi-Fi, cordless phones, you name it. This will be more difficult to eavesdrop on (like with the BlueSniper), and less likely to suffer interference. It also means that devices will be able to specialize: you can wear something that’s just storage and a little data display on your wrist, and your headphones can talk to it for playing music, your phone can talk to it for getting addresses, and your headphones can talk to the phone when you talk. (But expect a very rocky start as the protocols all get shaken out.)

Other things to expect: high-tech pickpockets will specialize in getting close enough to people to try and hack any devices in their body network, or subtle devices will be planted at chokepoints to do the same to passersby. Demonstrations of ad-hoc packet switched networks across tightly packed crowds on dance floors will get about as much media attention and last about as long as flash mobs did.