jaw-mounted personal audio

Fact: Bones conduct sound remarkably well (like those corny lollipops that played music but cost $10) Fact: Technology continues to allow for the manufacture of smaller and smaller components. Fact: Most (I don't know exact numbers) in this country have a filling put in a tooth at some point Fact: More and more kids (again, no numbers) are using orthodontia Fact: Personal audio (walkman, discman, MD, MP3 players) have become a rapidly increasing market

I propose that a miniature MP3 player be made that can be mounted either inside a tooth, filling, crown, whatever, or, somewhat easier, in orthodontia-type hardware. Given that thousands of transistors can now be applied to tiny wafers of silicon, I think its reasonable to hope that in the fairly recent future, a tiny chunk of metaloid material could be endowed with the ability to hold data, and play music. This music could be transferred on and off the device via a tiny antenna working at a specific frequency. The player would have to have very little volume, because the bones of the jaw and skull would carry the sound quite efficiently to the eardrum. A "clapper" type mechanism could turn it on and off, such that two chomps of the jaw in rapid succession would activate or deactivate the device. It might be sooner, however, that these abilities could be given to something much larger, removable from the mouth, yet still quite common, like a retainer. Teenagers would be an excellent market. Listen to music in class, at the dinner table, wherever, unnoticed until you try to sing along.