[Steven Lyle Jordan]

This article in the Independent is a nice primer on the R&D into creating a world of wireless power delivery.

The technology behind the following scenario already exists: You drive home in your electric car, which has been charged through the road outside work, and park it in your garage, which is also equipped with an underfloor power source. You sit down and fire up the flat-screen wireless television hanging on the wall while you check your emails on your cable-free laptop. Both devices are powered via the wireless unit in the ceiling, which also started juicing up the phone in your pocket as soon as you walked in the door.

On one hand, the attraction to a "cordless" world is a strong one. People who use a lot of gadgets and appliances are sick of the rat's nests of cords they have to deal with, and the perceived risk to safety of all those wires strewn about.

On the other hand, we live in an era where people are nervous about living too close to high-voltage transmission and radio towers, because of the electro-magnetic fields they produce. (I had a friend who lived 2 blocks from a radio tower, and if you opened his oven door--on or off--you could clearly hear the signal from the station...)

So, when you tell people they can look forward to having EM coils in their walls and ceilings, constantly sending out EM fields powerful enough to charge their devices and run their appliances from a distance...

I'm interested to hear everyone's opinion on this, pro and con. The floor is open.