Strictly come invisible

The world’s first ‘fantasy-reality’ show began with the search for that which couldn’t be seen – an invisibility cloak.

The first entry almost went unnoticed. It was an invisibility cloak made of metascreen - ultra-thin copper tape affixed to equally thin polycarbonate film. The cloak desisted from reflecting any kind of waves and hence, the presence of an object behind it could never be felt. Besides, little antennae on the cloak ensured that no radar could detect what was being concealed, so a 3-dimensional object could be made absolutely invisible from any angle.

Next came a Canadian company that based its invisibility cloak on Quantum Stealth technology, with which it could clothe an entire army. Now, soldiers could strike fearlessly in broad daylight without any fear of being seen or detected. The material made rays of light bend around the object instead of deflecting off it and could operate in any frequency.

The doll maker came up with a battery-operated invisibility cloak. The concept of drawing from an external energy source helped - the metasurface was fitted with strategically positioned amplifiers that drew energy from the battery, thus making the cloak effective across a broader frequency spectrum and suppressing visibility in varied conditions. (On a tangential note, the fact that it is battery-operated has caught the fancy of a few Asian countries that are currently trying to mass-produce it at a much cheaper cost and flood the Indian market.)

The IT guy entered the contest with a cloak that was also an analog computer, capable of performing complex calculations. (All these years, you needed a screensaver to hide your chat windows when the boss came around, but now, you could hide the entire computer by making it invisible.) However, it is not yet known if you can do status updates on Facebook using the cloak-computer, but you can sure get your integration and differentiation problems solved by it. How? The IT whiz threw light on the subject by explaining how the computer used light waves to create graph-like curves in space that determined various calculus functions, while the cloak modified the characteristics of the light waves to turn an object invisible.

A printer came next and demonstrated a simple way to construct an invisibility cloak – just print it using a 3D printer. (So how does one find out if the print out has arrived? We’ll leave the judges to deal with it.) The cloak had perforations based on a specific algorithm that enabled it to deflect microwaves, and was creating using stereolithographic technology - layers of polymer plastic were added one over the other, carefully leaving out the holes and perforations as dictated by the algorithm, until the cloak was, er, invisible.

A tailor came up with his own idea - and created an invisibility cloak using gold-coated silk thread. However, like Krypton for Superman and the heel for Achilles, the cloak had a weak link - it could function only at terahertz frequencies. It had already been tested on an emperor and barring a little boy, no one could see through it. This inference led to another glaring loophole - the invisibility cloak did not work on children.

Next was a cook. “If I can make noodles in 2 minutes, I can make an invisibility cloak just as fast,” he boasted. He removed the layer of Teflon from his saucepan and used it to make a cloak in just 15 minutes, using a process called topology optimization. "I just used advanced computer software and the algorithm did the rest," he explained nonchalantly. Teflon proved to be an excellent alternative to any metamaterial, according to him.

Finally, a college kid came on the show. "15 minutes? Nonsense, I can tell you how to become invisible in 3 seconds flat." The judges looked at him, awestruck.  "Oh it's simple," he continued. "To become invisible, all you need to do is stop talking." "I don't understand," a judge blurted out.

"We do it all the time in social media. Just turn off the chat feature - you'll become invisible."

The message that went poof!

Alcohol fumes. Binary code. Computers that identify liars. Welcome to the ABC of communication...

The queues at the hospitals and dispensaries were unending. The morgue was contemplating two-seater accommodation to fit in all the new arrivals. Classes that taught breathing techniques were huffing and puffing, trying to control the crowds.

The reason was simple - email apnoea. In other words, people simply forgot to breathe when they were keying in emails. The mother of all apnoeas – sleep apnoea – helps strangle the body's oxygen supply so that it can come out of its restful state and fight any imminent danger. But why email apnoea? Was it technology's way of getting you out of your reverie so that you didn't send any objectionable mail that you subconsciously typed - much like Gmail's math problem that you needed to solve to prove that you were not drunk when sending that late night mail?

So, was it better to hyperventilate than to vent online? This question led the social activists - fighting for human rights - and the social media activists, who demanded a better communication system, to protest, claiming that e-mail was killing people. Soon the hunt for an alternate mode of staying in touch took epic proportions. Then came the nerds. "Why can't we simply stick to SMS, IM or social media?" they demanded. "Aren't these the most common communication platforms today?" The geeks however, outsmarted them with a new research, stating that a computer had figured out how to spot a liar through digital messages - he was the one who was taking longer than the rest to respond.

“Since most users assume an alternate identity or create a fake profile, it's very easy to be misled - that makes it imperative to come up with a better system,” they claimed. As soon as the research emerged, the deceptive kinds joined in the search as well, as they didn't want to be identified and thereby lose their edge in life. (“Apparently, 54% of all lies can be detected by humans, but what's to tell how long we can be safe in that 46% zone?”)

Finally, two researchers decided to drown their sorrows in vodka - and in a flash, figured out that they could use the spirit to send text messages. (Nope, they were not drunk.) It was a case of sending the message in spurts and demodulating the same at the other end. Alcohol molecules were sent across a distance in binary code, so their presence would indicate ‘one’ and their absence, zero. In scientific terms, it was the world's first text message created and transmitted using molecular communication, but in pure tech terms, it was a vodka-soaked sms, which was much to cheer about.

"Big deal! We've always been obsessed about the birds and the bees, so what's different now?" claimed the critics. Apparently, certain species of seabirds and bees had also been using similar communication techniques. Besides, the concept of sending alcohol vapours in spurts to communicate a message was a lot like the smoke signals used by Red Indians, which enabled them to make a point even across large distances.

Something new had to be done. It looked like technology was not really on the money when it came to facilitating effective communication. The new system had to be robust, be free of any health hazard, not involve alcoholic spirits (why waste good liquor?) and shouldn't have been practised by birds and animals before.

Finally a little boy spotted an empty bottle rolling around aimlessly. It was the same one that had held the vodka used for the text message experiment. 'Perhaps this will help,' thought the boy as he wrote a little note, asking the recipient of the message to suggest a new way of communication. He then rolled the note, shoved it into the bottle, closed it and threw it into the sea.

And that is how the ‘message in a bottle’ came to be.