I'm all for environmentally friendly products. But, I'm not forgetting that we're part of a rat race in an eternal quest for market share and money-at-all-costs. I'm learning to ask questions before becoming totally enthralled about a new announcement.

The prototype appears to be quite big: 1.5 inches each side, has a plastic casing and an output of 50 miliwatts. It uses enzymes to create electricity by breaking down a sugar solution that has been poured into the unit.

The new technology is great. At the same time, I'm forced to ask the question: Where do you get the sugar solution?

Is it like maize-based bio-ethanol, which might be agro, but certainly isn't bio? Will it also encourage people all over the world to abandon their normal crops, enticed as they are by the promise of a better income? If so, what will happen when farmers have used up all the local water supply to irrigate their fields of corn, we don't have cotton anymore and there's yet another imbalance in the world?

Will the Atlanta firm amalgamate with the rising sun and set up a new business so we can all subscribe to liquid energy through the cable? Will we all go around dressed in clothes made from recycled PET bottles left over from the portable power supplies that have already been emptied?

Here's more reading on nécro-carburants (French) and necrocarborantes (Spanish)

This seems to be another step towards use of the  ultimate carry-on electricity source: our own blood. It is likely that the inventors have that as their  ultimate goal –  but are electrodes in one’s body attactive to everyone? HOwever, that will be just another kind of piercing?