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I have always intensely disliked the mobility part of most mobile technologies: cordless telephones, walkmen, mobile phones, laptops... because the battery is often dead or about to run out and you have to run to a cord somewhere for charging, but you've lost your charging cord, and then over time the battery wears out and so on... I've gotten interested in e-reader technology, in large part, because the battery life spans weeks and not just hours or days. I pretty much always use my laptop in a plugged-in state except for emergencies because I prefer the inconvenience of a wire then the inconvenience of my battery dying.

Anyway, I am curious if there are ways to return to wires in more applications to lower the demand for batteries across industries? In other words, would it be possible to innovate away from a dependence on batteries towards a different model of electricity access in those industries where mobility is a luxury rather than a necessity? Cars may need long-lasting batteries, but do all of our computing devices?