Networking at the next office shindig will take on new meaning once you get a pair of smart shoes. Last October at the MIT Media Lab's 10th anniversary party, Tom Zimmerman, inventor of the dataglove, and Professor Neil Gershenfeld demonstrated that a handshake can exchange business cards between shoe computers (see "Wearable Computing," Wired 3.12, page 256). The inventors use a technique that sends harmless, low level electrical signals through the body, turning it into a network. The shoes act as processors for the network and are partly powered by the energy you create when you walk.
"With our intra-body signaling mechanism, you can use your whole body to do I/O," says Gershenfeld. A caveat: if you get tipsy at a party, don't exchange data with just anyone you never know who's carrying a virus program as their calling card.
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