Disney researchers propose a novel means of passing audio messages around-- a microphone one can whisper recordings into before transmission by simply touching the potential listener's earlobe.
Dubbed Ishin-Denshin (after the Japanese concept of unspoken understanding, translated as “what the mind thinks, the heart transmits"), the technology uses less of telepathy and more of the magic of electricity. The microphone actually encodes sounds into a high voltage, low current electrical signal, one able to modulate an electrostatic field around the speaker's body, charging them.
A touch from the charged person on another's earlobe vibrates the ear slightly, creating a "speaker" allowing them (and only them) to listen to the message.
"If you remember the beginning of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy', when the Vogons arrive to blow up the Earth, they turn every object on Earth into a perfect hi-fi PA system that is used to announce that the Earth is going to be destroyed," Disney researcher Ivan Poupyrev tells New Scientist. "Ishin-Denshin is something along those lines, minus destruction of the Earth."
The technology might find use at Disney, a company surely able to find applications to a technology allowing one to transmit audible messages by touch. So wait for it to appear in Disney theme parks, if not consumer products, soon enough.
Go Disney Research Ishin-Denshin
Go Magic Microphone Lets You Whisper With Your Fingertips (New Scientist)