I've got the internet IN MY ARM

[ceb]

http://www.core77.com/competitions/GreenerGadgets/projects/4673/

Would you or wouldn't you? (maybe a spod terminal rather than a phone)

Comments

[simont]

After a quick read of the article, it doesn't look like a good deal to me.

Cons: impossible to deliberately leave it behind somewhere, requires surgery to install, requires surgery again to upgrade, requires surgery to get it out in an emergency if it gets rooted by a passing Bluetooth hacker. Plus, I'd need more than their blithe assertion that it "lies benignly between skin and muscle" to be convinced that it wasn't going to cause biological problems of some sort; perhaps if everyone had been using them for ten years I might be less dubious, but it seems to me that with bodily integrity at stake being an early adopter has an unattractive risk profile.

Pros, in principle: impossible to forget to take it with you, never needs battery changing.

Pros, in practice: none. You can't forget to take the implanted Bluetooth device with you and it never needs its battery changing, but as I understood the article, in order to do anything it has to connect to the mobile phone you carry separately, which you can forget and do have to change

[ceb]

but as I understood the article, in order to do anything it has to connect to the mobile phone you carry separately

Bah, I must have missed that bit, that just makes it an inconvenient screen.

(Also, bluetooth, ugh, obviously.)

[simont]

Bah, I must have missed that bit

Looking again at the article, I can't actually find any explicit text resolving this point either way. I think I must have got that idea by reading between the lines from the description of the device as a digital tattoo interface, from the implication that Bluetooth was the only way it had to connect to the outside world, and from the first sentence starting "Her cell phone is ringing" rather than "Her arm is ringing".

[aardvark179]

It gives me the creeps slightly, seems drastic as far as installation and upgrades go, and you can't use it one handed (well okay, you can only use it one handed, but you'll be using both arms while doing so).

[stephdairy]

I think I wouldn't, because I don't like the idea of having something artificial inside me, let alone something that has a radio transmitter in it and whose security properties I don't trust. Also I don't like being constantly in touch.

(S)

[pjc50]

Quite cool, but I wouldn't want to beta-test it. Also, what happens when you take it into an airport?

[ewx]

Surgery for upgrades is a rather unattractive idea, but perhaps that'd cause the market in such devices to adopt a more reasonable release cycle than their current equivalents. Perhaps when we have nanomachines that could construct or upgrade them in place. (Plus Simon's worries about safety and security.) Other than that ... sounds useful.