Friday Review: You got the touch

In the midst of all the number-crunching taking place at Ericsson's Stockholm headquarters on Wednesday some of the kit maker's boffins took time out set up a demonstration of one of the company's newest and most unusual inventions. "Could we use ourselves as a medium for communication?" asked Ericsson strategy manager Jan Hederen, to kick things off. "Yes" was the answer that sprang to mind given he was speaking to me, thereby acting as a medium for communication; however, his question no doubt related to the equipment arranged on the desk behind him. The technology in question was capacitive coupling, unveiled at CES earlier this month by chief executive Hans Vestberg. It effectively turns the human body into a USB cable by transmitting data via low…