Ericsson’s new technology will allow you to transfer data between two gadgets by sending it directly through your body. The demonstrations of the technology are really cool, but what will it actually be good for in real life.
During the Ericsson keynote, the “capacitive coupling” tech was demoed as a way to easily transfer photos from a phone to a big screen. Usually, you’d use an HDMI cable or some kind of wireless conection to get this done, but in this case CEO Hans Vestberg was used as the link. His colleague was holding a smartphone with the picture on it, ad Vestberg touched a transmitter connected to a screen, and poof, there was the photo. It was pretty impressive.
The technology is not unlike what everyone from Samsung to Apple are trying to do for you with Wi-Fi sync and NFC chip technology.
Josh
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 12:45 PMwhoa
StevoTheDevo
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 12:48 PMCool!
Mark
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 1:50 PMUmmm, at what is happening to your body when the file is transferred. Hate to think what it frying on the way through!
Vaporeon
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:12 PMViruses just got worse.
Ian
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:13 PMPresumably, this is similar tech to powerline networking. If so, it’s just sending pulses through the already existing electricity.
However, I’d like to be sure that it’s safe for human consumption too ;)
Cam
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 4:58 PMAn electronics engineer friend did this at uni, about 10 years ago.
Its exactly the same as powerline networking, except its using your skin as the conduit rather than wires. His adaptation was for public phones (you remember those things?) and having a chip/credit card on your body which was charged the cost of the call.
It would be super cool to be integrated with NFC for authenticating to computers (by touching the keyboard).
Daniel
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 3:49 PMand one more step closer for skynet to control us directly!
Jackson Bison
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:04 PM“The technology is not unlike what everyone from Samsung to Apple are trying to do for you with Wi-Fi sync and NFC chip technology.”
Um, no. It is exactly unlike – this is about using your body as a wire. not NFC or WiFi, which as a Gizmodo writer, you should know the difference.
capnpineapple
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:31 PMpfft, i’ve seen this done before with 4 dudes holding hands and 10/100 ethernet travelling from one side of them to the other
Ozoneocean
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 3:55 PMPfft, nerd porn.
Anj
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 10:56 PMThe potential use for the layman would be fantastic!
Rather than having to bother with wifi connection (granted, they have been simplified rather well recently), one would just touch the phone, then touch the device they want to send the data to. Simple device selection. Brilliant!
Anj
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 11:08 PMOn second thought, maybe this tech would be better suited to setting up a connection.
I certainly wouldn’t want to sit there having to maintain a connection when i upload a large file!
Franz
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 12:34 AMWhat if a deaf and blind person gets their eyes replaced with cyborgs eyes to help them see again (this is actually happening), beam the information through their body (along with a data from cyborg ears), into their computer and record it as a data stream? Legal film bootlegging, that’s what. Problem? :D