Posted: February 25, 2011

Embracing our inner cyborg: Part 1

Information is like a drug

By Thomas Frey

It recently occurred to me that I was pulling my iPhone out of my pocket several times an hour to check information.

Over the past few months I‘ve become very self-conscious about the addictive nature of information and the OCD-like mannerisms that follow, and this constant checking-in is only one of several habit-changers I've noticed that accompany smartphones. Information is like a drug that we naturally crave. Whether it's the rumor mills of the past where gossip flew from one person to the next or today's smartphones, we all have an insatiable need to know.

While many feel we need to curb the excessive nature of this addiction, I tend to fall into the other camp, wanting to improve the flow of data to the point where it is far more pervasive, yet at the same time, seamless and invisible.

But that's where it gets crazy, because as smartphones evolve, they become an integral part of who we are. They become the digital nerve center for our physical existence.
Science fiction writers have long warned us of the dangers of half-human, half-machine cyborgs. Yet, as we invite this piece of networked intelligence into our lives, we begin to see this integration of humans and machines in a whole new light. Let me explain.

Exploding Marketplace

According to industry projections, the number of mobile broadband subscribers, which was 600 million at the end of 2010, is expected to almost double in 2011 to a billion and climb to five billion in 2016. Mobile network capacity will need to increase 20 to 25 times to handle the growing load.

The Chinese telecom company, Huawei, is predicting their traffic levels will rise 500 times by 2020.

Even with these dramatic numbers making their way into industry reports, as you read through the remainder of this article you will begin to understand why even these predictions are far too low.

Personal Area Networks

In the mid-1990s, IBM researcher Thomas Zimmerman began exploring the idea of Personal Area Networks, or PAN technologies, which used the natural electrical conductivity of the human body to transmit digital information.

Since then the concept has evolved into wireless personal area networks, or WPAN, made possible with wireless network technologies such as IrDA, Bluetooth, UWB, Z-Wave and ZigBee.
Adding wireless to the equation, any two WPAN-linked devices within several meters of each other can communicate as if connected by a cable. Smartphone capabilities can then be dramatically enhanced with the simple addition of sensors, cameras, and other peripheral devices.

Evolving the Smartphone

Today's smartphones exist as self-contained communication tools, but that will begin to change as a wide assortment of peripheral devices enters the marketplace. Here are a few examples:

• The Sony Ericsson LiveView is a small display screen that can be worn as a watch or piece of jewelry and communicates wirelessly with your smartphone. It eliminates the need to constantly pull out your phone as information can be accessed with a simple glance of the wrist. Rumor has it that Apple will soon turn their Nanos into a similar interactive slave device for the iPhone.

• Mobisante, a company based in Redmond, Wash., has recently introduced an ultrasound probe as a smartphone peripheral device. The current prototype connects to a Toshiba TG01 smartphone, but plans are in place to connect to others.

• Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos will carry micro-LEDs, turning your skin into an interactive screen. Your skin will appear normal until the display is turned on, but once on, keyboards and other interactive controls will appear on your arm.

These type of innovations are just scratching the surface of what will be possible as every new wireless device creates a tremendous new opportunity for app developers to expand on the original intent.

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