Among historians of capitalism and technology, the process of engineering--a method of repeatable creation derived from the 17th-century discovery and exploitation of the scientific method--gets much of the credit for our world.
Because the technique uses off-the-shelf wireless transceivers similar to those used in home computer networks, "the cost of this system will be cheaper than existing methods of monitoring breathing, " says Neal Patwari, senior author of a study of the new method and an assistant professor of electrical engineering.