Electronic skin

Electrical wiring in/on the skin surface

And away we go... Will be interesting to see the developments that come from this.

I, for one, welcome our... ah, you know the rest.

I always love these articles. "One day, after millions in research, we will be able to do what we already can. But with smaller equipment. That you will have to pay more for." While I LOVE advances in technology I can't understand this. Ok, so my skin is wired. So is my house and it really doesn't do anything... Conductive circuitry does not advancement make. But, thanks for the article. Sorry, had to rant.

All new technologies have to come from somewhere, and while it's true many discoveries never lead to market viable products, it is impossible to tell which is which until the discovery is made, tested, and advanced upon. Some of the best technologies we have came from unlikely sources so I for one encourage any scientific advancement(so long as it is achieved in an ethical manner).

And while it may not do anything on its own, it may be a enabler for something else.

Right now tho, i think what is holding us back is the cumbersome interfaces between man and machine. The basics have not changed much since the typewriter! And still requires a wide flat surface to be employed effectively. I wonder if we ever will find a interface that can work while we have both hands full and with the same or lower error rates.

Voice recognition is advancing at a rate similar to RTS games' research mechanics. We'll have 99% accuracy within our* lifetimes. Once that happens, somebody will come up with a clever way to replace the mouse, perhaps a Google-like command line.

* User made in the 80s, for reference.

Now that you mention it, i think a related article mentioned that one could get very high word accuracy by reading the neural signals of the throat even when no word was actually spoken.

ah, found it. Good old Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/0...ent-devices.ars

Seems they used it to read throat muscle activity tho, so i guess it is more sub-vocal then non-vocal.