You heard it here first friends.  The future.  As always.  It's coming.

It all started a about 20 years ago when Elizabet (hippie parents) Izensmith went to get her ears pierced at that Somerville, MA tattoo/piercing parlor.  The usual conversation persisted:

Eliz: "Which part of my ear should i get?"
Best Friend At That Time:  "OMG yo, I totes have no idea."
Eliz: "I think i want the bar across the top.  Even though its two holes."
BFATT: "Two holes!!!!"
Eliz: "Gross BFATT, i don't think we're going to be friends much longer.  How about piercing the little tab of cartilage on the inside."
BFATT: "ew, you mean the piece of skin that your ear-buds fit behind?"
Eliz: "Yah"
BFATT: "gross."
Eliz: "But that little flap of skin has absolutely no purpose and yet takes up prime ear real estate . . . "
*lightbulb goes on*

Turns out Elizabet was a computer nerd as a kid that grew up to be a neurosurgeon.  But this trip to get her ear's pierced (she got the bar) stayed with her.

As her surgery skills bloomed, so did the microprocessing software being used in cellphones.  The most recent innovation (which came 3 years after the mechanism itself was shrunk down to the size of a watch battery) allowing for Elizabet's breakthrough work came when engineers discovered that when coated and cored with a new alloy, the microprocessor inside the minuscule chip no longer emitted heat or radiation externally.

This was what Elizabet needed to go ahead and implant the first stereo telephone inside the head of her first test subject (heavily funded by Verizon).  The procedure was incredibly un-invasive (for surgery), due largely to the fact that the majority of the procedure was located in that small tab of skin, prime ear real estate, adjacent the ear canal.  With the mechanism already so svelte, the trickier part was connecting the ear neurons to the sound input from the device.  The bio-mechanical heavy lifting of creating synergy between human neurons and mechanical neurons had been the centerpiece of Elizabet's recent Science magazine cover.  This technology was in place a solid year before the coolant had even been created.

The trickiest part end up been the microphone.  After having a device implanted in your ear(s) (we'll get there), customers understandably didn't feel like wearing a separate clip-on mic.  Turns out, marketing solved this particular problem.

With a surgery that resembles more of a delicate piercing than a cut and sew job, a tiny tiny (staple-thin) indestructible bluetooth microphone is inserted in the front left of the throat (for guys, it was adams-apple adjacent).  To keep the device correctly in place the "top" screws on from the outside (see labret-piercing for a blue-print).  And whenever you have the option for jewelry that can stand as both a status symbol (of your ability to get a phone implanted inside you) and a facial accessory, that is what marketing professionals call "synergy," and it gives them millions of tiny orgasms all over their brains and bank accounts.

With Tiffany's now co-funding the research, things began falling into place faster and faster.  There were already Tiffany's brand Verizon "voice changer" accessories to add onto the screw-on microphone holders--which uncoincidentally all looked like tiny miniature sterling silver hearts.  But, press that heart, and you can talk on your phone as a man, woman, Australian, French-person, etc.  Just the accents of course, translation programs didn't start popping up for another few years.

Elizabet had always believed that the device should be put in both ears.  It gave you the ability to listen to your conversation in stereo, for one, but it also gave a much grander experience when streaming your music to the blue tooth receivers in your ear.  It also, at first, is what allowed for conference calling.  While future models (all-stereo anyway at that point) would make it possible for single ear conferencing, early on, you had to press your ear tab to hold, press the other to answer the incoming call, then press the first ear tab once again to conference.  Sounds clunkier than it actually was, and it also kinda made you look like a secret service agent, which customers reported making them feel badass.  There were early versions of the one-earred procedure, but often they were considered shady, especially after a few years when the difference in price was nominal compared to the grand total.

And so, with the approval from both the FDA and the American Medical Council, the Verizon/Motorola IEDX1 became the first phone/medical procedure sold in concert in America.  With prototypes being strategically beta-tested in large densely populated markets, the demand rose at iPad like levels.  Billboards everywhere sprouted different versions of "Do you REALLY want to experience hands free?"

And everybody did.*


*none of this is true.