I have Digg in my feed reader, all of the front page stories. A few minutes ago, I picked up on "We're One Step Closer to Wireless Electricity", which points to the story at Wired Blogs.

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has been working on a magnetic transmitter and receiver pair, using magnetic resonance coils. I don't understand why they're pursuing this line of research. Since we're already being bombarded with high-frequency signals (audio and radio) all of the time, wouldn't it make more sense to put the research dollars into something that can already be detected?

I'm no science wizard or technology guru of any kind, but it seems to me that the whiz kids at MIT are heading in the wrong direction. I mean, take where I live as an example. I know that I'm being constantly bombarded with cell phone signals coming to and from my neighbors and relatives. Even though the Philippines is considered a "third world" country, it amazes me to see how many people have cell phones. The difference here is that they use text messaging much more than voice calling, whereas in the US they use voice calling more often than text messaging.

I'm all for wireless power, but something inside me tells me that transmitter/receiver pairs are the only things that are ever going to be researched. The powers that be will never allow us to have something like free electricity at our disposal. Solar power may be "free", but with the cost of materials and maintenance, it takes years to get any benefit from it being free power. It takes a long time to pay for itself in terms of savings versus investment.