Imagine if the Enterprise's on-board replicator made walkie-talkies, instead of cups of tea. That's the latest way-out idea from Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research arm. Sending and receiving messages covertly and quietly in a battle zone can be tough. Darpa's answer: outfit troops with a cell phone-sized "replicator[s]" to "generate disposable… transmitters" when they want to communicate.
In Darpa's eyes, "the disposable transmitter" would be about the size and weight of "a sheet of paper… possibly with an adhesive backing for deployment on all surfaces." Messages -- up to 60 alphanumeric characters is length -- could be printed on to the page by translating 'em into a series of relatively-stable chemical compounds, and then arranged those compounds into a Morse Code-like string.
Using a 3-D printer, perhaps, the paper-like transmitter would also have circuitry stamped on it. And that circuitry would be used to broadcast the message, using pulses of light – an idea which sounds about as crazy as a replicator, but has actually been around since the days of Alexander Graham Bell.
Darpa wants a "breadboard replicator device," sending out messages with infrared light pulses, ready to go within 12 months. After another year, the agency wants the machine to be shrunk down to Blackberry-size, and its made-to-order transmitters broadcasting for up to four days at a clip.
