Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Wednesday 18/06/2002

KPNQWest corporate anthem: Another One Bites The Dust

You know how Beethoven composed music when he was deaf -- he held a stick in his jaws and touched it to the body of his keyboard: the vibrations carried through his skull and hit whatever was left of his hearing. The idea has been resurrected and given a twist -- a couple of researchers have put a tiny transducer inside a human tooth, hooked it up to a radio receiver and gone dental. Secret messages relayed to the subject, with no visible means of connection.

The possibilities are awesome. On the good side, I dare say you could make something similar that just slipped into the gap between gnashers and let you hook your cuspids up at whim: great for listening to the footy in meetings, doing stage magic and becoming mysteriously terribly well informed at parties. On the dark side, the possibilities for popping something like this into someone's mouth while they're having dentistry and then afflicting them with voices from afar... well, it might make a Bond movie.

But it'll lead to a huge increase in Mobile Mego -- that affliction when you go to talk to a friend who's wearing a hands-free mobile phone earpiece, and halfway through the conversation he gets a distracted look and starts uttering non-sequiturs. It's then you realise he was on hold to another place, was too polite to say but had to get back to his telecommunication. (Mego is Civil Service slang term for boring meetings -- My Eyes Glaze Over). When this toothsome innovation becomes commonplace, you won't even be able to tell what's going on...

One final thought: if radiation from the device causes the blood vessels to contract and the blood supply to that bit of the jaw to reduce, will it be known as Bluetooth Syndrome? I only ask...