I don't know whether to call this post "singular wireless" or "the singularity of being," but news like this makes me feel old:

Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) weren't concerned with such weighty questions when they developed a chip that allows you to listen to an iPod using your forearm as the transmission wire for the audio signals. The chip was detailed in one of several presentations during a session called "Silicon in Biology" at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) here Thursday.

Low power consumption was a common design thread throughout the several different chips presented by university researchers. The need to reduce power consumption of chips has become a mantra for the PC and server processor industry, but low power consumption takes on a new meaning when referring to chips that will be used inside the human body or on skin.

KAIST has built a prototype chip it thinks solves some of the problems encountered in setting up personal-area networks that take advantage of the body's ability to conduct electricity. Computer scientists have long envisioned connecting the numerous personal electronic devices the average technology fan carries around each day, but wiring those devices together is impractical, and Bluetooth connections are prone to interference, said Seong-Jun Song, a professor at KAIST.

Other groups have explored ways of using the body itself as the networking cable, but early chips consumed too much power or used data rates that were too slow for effective communication, Song said. KAIST's chip uses wideband signaling to reduce power consumption while boosting data rate. The chip sends low-power impulses across a wide swath of frequencies, rather than sending a high-power signal down a narrow frequency.

I say "too old" because while I'm only 51 and can expect to live maybe 30-40 years if I don't abuse my body to excess the way I once did, I will never have had the advantage that today's kids (probably including some of my readers) have. If you grow up with a technology that's meant to become part of you, it becomes a better "match" with your biological makeup than if you try to adapt to it after a life spent under the assumption certain things just can't be.

Sure, I remember all the hippy-dippy "I-feel-the-vibrations-radiating-from-you!" stuff from the 1960s and 1970s. But that was largely drug induced fantasy. This is techological reality.

Unless the NeoLuddites stop us, it will give new meaning to depictions of old, um, memes.

Like this:

And that's just for starters!

(Of course, in light of the point I'm trying to make, the old guy on the right would probably have to be considered the recipient.)

DISCLAIMER: By defacing and republishing the above depiction, no disrespect or offense is intended against advocates or opponents of creation. Or Allah God.

All depictions are intended to be coincidental only, and bear no relation to anything real or imagined, or unreal or unimagined.