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Sir Alexander Graham Bell invented the photophone, a wireless telephone of sorts that enabled sounds (including speech) to be transmitted via light. However, more than 130 years after the photophone first came to light, Professor Harald Haas is pioneering his own light-centric wireless communications technology. And ironically, he’s doing so from the Alexander Graham Bell building at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

At the Pagosa meeting, Michael Dreyspring, CEO of La Plata Electric Association, was in command for no more than two minutes and 40 seconds before the miffed residents of Pagosa Springs went volcanic and LPEA lost any semblance of control. As their pedantic power point presentation went up in flames, so did an outspoken and furious crowd.

Yesterday, the Government of Saskatchewan released the results of a scathing review for the fire and safety issues often referred to as “the smart meter debacle.” Yesterday’s report concluded that “Customer Safety Was Not Given Enough Priority.” “The primary issue of catastrophic meter failures which prompted the AMI program to be halted was not identified as an initial program risk.  When additional information about smart meter fires from other sources came to light, the risk of catastrophic meter failures did not prompt an independent reevaluation of the risk related to Sensus smart meters.”

While it is generally true that an individual customer’s smart meter is programmed to transmit his or her energy-related data back to the utility once every few hours, that is an extremely small percentage of the actual number of transmissions per day.  The wireless smart meter performs many other functions, such as network management, time synchronization, and activities related to forwarding routed messages for other customers.  Smart meters chatter back and forth among each other throughout the day.

The experiment of some doctoral students at Stanford is raising questions about the accuracy of PG&E's new SmartMeters. People all over the state have been complaining about them.

Nokia’s former Technology Chief, Matti Niemelä, was involved in the development the world’s first mobile phones, but fell seriously ill himself from mobile-phone microwave radiation. In addition, he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

"'Smart' meters … indirectly leak private, and potentially valuable, information about a building’s occupants’ activities. To extract this information, third-party companies are now employing cloud-based, ‘big data’ platforms to analyze smart meter data en masse. While the purpose is, ostensibly, to provide consumers energy-efficiency recommendations, companies are mining the data for any profitable information."

In the modern, technological world of today, our availability, connectivity and internet accessibility improve with each passing year. While our modern devices and the wireless networks that support them make life easier and more convenient, they unfortunately carry some hidden costs. And these costs come as chronic risks to our health. EMF radiation carries numerous documented health risks for people of all ages, but children and babies are especially vulnerable to invisible wireless radiation, because their bodies are still developing.

For the first time ever, Israel’s Health Ministry has issued a warning to the public about electromagnetic radiation in its newly published, updated list of carcinogens, based on recommendations by the World Health Organization and a ministry committee.

Carole Garcia showed us the smart meters on the back of her Rochester Hills home. But she says, she's scared to stand near it for too long. "A bloody nose... headache... vertigo... insomnia," are the symptoms she says she has suffered from since she moved in.