“Are ‘friends’ electric?” asked Gary Numan in 1979, and answers came there none. But perhaps the prince of synth’s pop-philosophising ignited a spark of curiosity, for that question has now been resolved — by a Japanese telecommunications company.

According to NTT Laboratories, it’s not just friends who are charged, but all of humanity. Each of us has an electrical aura, a private supply of wattage buzzing away in our immediate vicinity. For years its main function has been to entertain small children by rubbing balloons on their tummies and making the cat’s hair stand on end. But now a more practical — and fantastical — use is revealed.

Thanks to a small sensor, the body’s natural electrical supply can be harnessed, and human beings transformed into “human area networks”. These HANs (or “people”, as traditionalists may prefer to call them) are capable of communicating information at a rate of 100 megabytes per second. Technology is literally at one’s fingertips: touch the sensor, and digital data — e-mails, music, images — will leap across the extremities and download into the nearest mobile phone or PC.

For technophobes, it will conjure up William Gibsonesque images of the fall of mankind. For New Agers, it’ll be proof of the power of the mind. For most, however, it may turn out to be yet another piece of irritating science. After all, it’s bad enough having a car that tells you to fasten your seatbelt. Imagine getting up in the night for some warm milk, only to have your “aura” accidentally activate a debate between the fridge and the microwave about the nature of your eating habits. The stuff of cyber-nightmares indeed.