Vice’s Motherboard reported on X-Ray technology being brought to your smartphone. Yes, that’s right: using the Wifi functionality of any modern phone, you should be able to ‘see in’ a room you’re not in yourself. Well, one day. Not just yet, as the technology is still in its infancy. Clever use of radio reflections, and Motherboard immediately ties some obvious applications to it: firefighters looking into burning buildings, law enforcement checking out what’s behind the barricaded door.

Civilian applications should be possible too, they argue. Such as seeing if someone is hiding in a public restroom in a secluded and eerie spot late at night, waiting to jump and rob you as you come in. Right, I suppose that would be useful. But I can see an application in which our natural eyesight is severely lacking at this point, too. What about a mobile Wifi-based radar that alerts me when I’m about to bump into someone in the street? The odds are huge these days, with the majority of the population staring at their little screens while they are about to walk right into some busy traffic. How useful would it be to have an alert on your cellphone screen to warn you against the upcoming collision? Park distance control meets Wifi on your cellphone. That app is going to be downloaded a lot more than any law-enforcement-I’ll-break-down-your-door-if-you-don’t-reflect-my-radio-waves app.