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EARLIDS

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	Eyelids are useful organs, and earlids that would enable one to shut
out sound voluntarily would also be useful.  However, if we put our technological
imagination to work, we can do much better than that.

	Suppose all sound reaching a person's auditory nerve comes through an
electronic channel.  The source of the sound is selected and the sound may be
filtered.  The following are possible sources of sound:

	%. The ambient sound.  It comes from microphones attached to the person
and may be filtered by frequency to eliminate band limited noises.  It may be
limited to eliminate loud noises.  It may be selected directionally to allow
conversation at a distance.

	%. Radio.

	%. A source of recorded sound.

	%. The individual telephone.  The idea here is that telephone numbers
should be attachable to persons as well as to places.  Systems of cellular mobile
radio telephones have been proposed for the usual mobile telephone applications.
In fact, AT&T has applied for frequencies for a system that will allow 500,000
mobile radiotelephones in a city.  In this system, the city is divided into cells,
and the frequencies assigned to a cell may be re-used in distant cells.  Presumably,
the modulation scheme discriminates well against weak signals.  A computer keeps
track of what cell a subscriber is in or finds him when he is called and also assigns
him an unused channel.  We propose to extend this to a personal radiotelephone which
will be feasible when electronics is yet more compact.

	The individual telephone will have a number of social effects some of which
might be bad unless compensated by suitable customs or laws.  Any person will be
able to reach any other person at any time.  This can allow people who are
physically separated instantaneous communication while they are engaged in other
activities.  This will enable separated people to maintain much closer social
relationships of a personal or family or professional or hobby character.  It
obviously requires an elaborate system for the protection of privacy from unwanted
calls.  One must be able to ($) reject calls from certain people, ($) accept calls
only from a certain class of people, ($) allow urgent communication, etc.  Perhaps
if a call is declared urgent, the sender incurs a charge on his telephone bill
if the recipient doesn't agree that the call was urgent.