Google-owned Motorola Mobility has filed for a patent for an electronic skin tattoo that sounds much like a complete device stitched to the skin. It will have a power source too. To top that, the tattoo can also be used as a lie detector.
I am amazed. They sound like some of my favourite sci-fi movies and books. Favourite as they succeed in having the desired effect on me. They make me think. They worry me.
Can we think of a life without our mobile phones? Would that be too long a rewind and tough on our minds now running in the power saver mode? To think of a life without a smart phone would be easier.
Let me help!
We wouldn’t have maps and I would be lost in my bedroom. I wouldn’t be sure if my train journey would end in 5 minutes or five hours. Some of us will have to calculate how much 2 samosas and a lime juice cost on the toes. I wouldn’t be able to check the whatsapp conversation to recollect the name of my baby niece. One of my friends will never be able to spell ‘colleague’ right ever again. I can never be “online @ work” from the theatre. Life will be tough. To make it worse, you will miss the intimacy of the all-knowing and almighty Google. As a consolation you may keep the scrap pad and the address book. (Smirk!)
Yet, we will embrace the new tattoos (when and if such technology becomes commercial and I pray that it does not) with the same enthusiasm. We will flaunt it with our I-love-you’s and the tattoo will glow in glittery green. I wonder what you would tell your boss when he asks you about your opinion of his new venture. I hope the tattoo glows only in a single degree of red.
Nobody will lie again. We can have criminal court kiosks now! The true intentions of men will be raw and out in the open for everyone to see. You may not have real friends anymore. You may never have to wonder what the other person’s intentions are. There will be no need to play it safe. There will be no pranks and eventually there will be no thinking.
(My paranoia button on the right thumb will have been glowing red by now but, truly, someone someday will own the world.)