Figure 1 – Electric outlets. IPhone photograph. (c) DE Wolf 2016.

Think about it. All around the world people are plugging in, tapping into the energy source, the so called grid. It is a great symbol of modern technological achievement – the wired network. Of course, a little more than a hundred years ago it didn’t exist. I am tempted to ask, who then would have thought it possible? However, that is just the point there are dreamers – people like Tesla and Edison.

So it makes you wonder whether it might someday be possible to have a wireless source of energy, and there are already inductive schemes like those charging disks at your local Starbucks and airport. Two things come to mind. First, that with high voltage power-lines the energy is actually stored between the wires, and second there is so much energy nowadays in electromagnetic waves that we are essentially bathed in, that you can build a little antenna/circuit and charge your cellphone without plugging it in.

Fifty years ago we were slaves or captives to wired telephone systems and now wired systems (landlines) are becoming antiques.  The dreaming here is very obvious. “Kirk to Enterprise. Beam me up, Scotty.”

Tele-transporting? Is that next? There are about one hundred reasons that it makes no sense in terms of physics. And then there is the problem of the call “dropping.” I mean would you really trust your carrier with your elements?

Captain James T. Kirk: You ready, Bones?
Dr. McCoy: No. I signed aboard this ship to practice medicine, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget.
Captain James T. Kirk: You’re an old-fashioned boy, McCoy.