Remember those people who claimed... to have radios embedded inside a tooth, and were slightly wild eyed and had weird views on interesting topics...
Well welcome to the brave new world of nanotube radio receivers. You can fit a fully functional radio receive inside a human cell now.
Make way for the real nanopod and make room in the Guinness World Records. A team of researchers with the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have created the first fully-functional radio from a single carbon nanotube, which makes it by several orders of magnitude the smallest radio ever made.
"A single carbon nanotube molecule serves simultaneously as all essential components of a radio -- antenna, tunable band-pass filter, amplifier, and demodulator," said physicist Alex Zettl, who led the invention of the nanotube radio. "Using carrier waves in the commercially relevant 40-400 MHz range and both frequency and amplitude modulation (FM and AM), we were able to demonstrate successful music and voice reception."
"The entire radio would easily fit inside a living cell, and this small size allows it to safely interact with biological systems," Zettl said. "One can envision interfaces with brain or muscle functions, or radio-controlled devices moving through the bloodstream."
http://www.physorg.com/...
Welcome to the brave new world of networks that live inside your body, and or the person next to you, and or in the next block, and or the next city, and or the next country.
Basically we are entering the age of the Borg.
Could be very interesting scary times ahead for mankind, or indeed the whole bio system on this fragile planet.
The possibilities are endless, on one hand you could insert a nanoite into every neuron and or body cell, and then map a human brain 100%, or super connect a persons brain for massive intelligence or madness ;)
Theres even the possibility for transforming a living creatures brain from flesh to non organic, we could transfer ourselves into non biological forms of life using nano technology, and thus attain immortality quite easily.
Some frivolous and fun sides to this too, imagine having nano LEDs applied either during a tattoo or ingested and targeted at the skin cells, fancy being able to change colour at a whim or put on a fancy Chameleon light show for the world to see, or having a video screen under your skin. Some tattoo enthusiasts cover themselves almost 100% with tats, nano tech would appeal to them.
PS; the BORG (tm) for those who are not Star Trek TNG (tm) fans are a cyborg civilization with networking abilities, basically they all are connected together as a network to share information.
Bit like the Internet is a prototype Borg system today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...