The Next Tech Revolution

L-Wave writes "Here is an interesting article on cincinnati.com about the next revolution in technology. "The Internet revolution was about people connecting with people. The next revolution will be about things connecting with things." The story mentions having "tags" on every possible items from glasses to grocery, and each one identifying itself on a network...very cool stuff." We've run some earlier stories about the Auto-ID Center and RFID tags. This is an important topic - it will be a huge social issue once people realize that consumer goods will come with tags that allow them to be tracked individually.

Comments

Looking forward to it

[samael]

I want the ability to monitor everything.

I also want strong safeguards in place to stop people monitoring things they shouldn't be allowed to, and using the results for purpouses that people haven't agreed to.

Interesting article

[freeweed]

Neat stuff. I really like the concept of self-serve grocery checkouts myself. Typical paranoia though:

it will be a huge social issue once people realize that consumer goods will come with tags that allow them to be tracked individually

Maybe I just don't get it. Keeping tabs on 300 million US citizens is well-nigh impossible - noone cares about the individual, and actually logging this much data is pretty much a moot point. Now imagine this extended to several hundred BILLION consumer goods. Do we really have anything approcahing the capability to DO anything with this much data, let alone something bad? I mean, it's sorta fun to think that the government/corporations/whoever really cares about me individually, and is devoting massive amounts of manpower and/or computer resources to tracking my shopping habits, but.. why would they bother?

Re:Interesting article

[Kaiwen]

Keeping tabs on 300 million US citizens is well-nigh impossible ... Now imagine this extended to several hundred BILLION consumer goods.

You're assuming some sort of gigantic centralized government database. But there are other possibilities.

Merchants will tag their inventory to protect themselves from theft, then log the inventory's movement on premises. Once you leave the store with it, your presence is detected by the local street safety patrol's monitors tracking you by your driver's license, until you enter your next destination, say the local pub. Inside the pub, you pay -- cash -- for a quick stimulant, with the cash register reading the embedded chip (which marks the bill as genuine with a unique serial number) and noting (courtesy of a tie-in to the IRS database which tracks all currency movement for tax assessment purpose) that you received that bill as change at the local florist's.

Next stop is a quick drive to your mother's to drop off her Mother's Day flowers, while the local security firm you pay to track the whereabouts of your late-model sportster registers your every turn.

Of course, Ma Bell also monitors your every step via your GPS-enabled cellphone so it can conveniently bombard you with advertising from whatever local business you're happening by at the moment.

I mean, it's sorta fun to think that the government/corporations/whoever really cares about me individually, and is devoting massive amounts of manpower and/or computer resources to tracking my shopping habits, but.. why would they bother?

You get the picture. No, there won't be a single centralized database monitoring every aspect of your life, but rather a myriad of local databases tracking just that portion of your activities in which it has a vested interest. Tying it all together later would require nothing more than a simple court warrant and an Internet connection. Or, I'm sure, private investigators could provide the same service for a fee.

Re:Interesting article

[Surak]

Maybe I just don't get it. Keeping tabs on 300 million US citizens is well-nigh impossible - noone cares about the individual, and actually logging this much data is pretty much a moot point.

Not impossible at all. Just about everyone in the US has *some* data stored about them somewhere on a computer. It's just not all centralized into one big database. You have your social security record. Everyone in the country has one (or is supposed to have one anyway).

Using that as a key, we can come up with some interesting data. If we look at your mortgage company's database, for instance, we can use that SSN to search for your mortgage records, which will will tell us where you live. Doing a search for that SSN in either the IRS database or your state Dept of Treasury's database, we can find out who your current and past employers are.

You get the picture. The data is there, its just not centralized and easily crossreferenced, but it is there. So yes, it IS possible to keep track of 300 million citizens.

Now imagine this extended to several hundred BILLION consumer goods.

As for your shopping habits, these would be, again, recorded by different individual corporations interested in different pieces of data. Not one big database. Manufacturers of consumer electronics devices, for instance, are probably NOT interested in what brand of tuna you buy. But they probably *are* interested in that digital camera you bought, or the cell phone you carry around.

Re:Interesting article

[j_kenpo]

Neat stuff. I really like the concept of self-serve grocery checkouts myself. Typical paranoia though: Well, this ranks right up there with E-Commerce on the useful to everyday average people meter, which is pretty damned LOW. When you take customer service out of the store going experience, IE the person at the checkout that you complain to when the store didn't have this or that price was wrong, people get pretty bitchy. Try telling the a series of electronicly linked checkouts that you HATE this brand of Widget X and the price is too high and see what happens.... Im just picturing the scene in Zoolander where the two guys are hoping around like cavmen trying to get the files out of a computer.... But then again, I may be giving too much credit to Mr Murphey and not to the everyday average Joe Schmoe...

Re:Interesting article

[ibbey]

This is true to an extent. However, the 60 second checkouts that even current generation self checkout systems allow make this sort of thing worthwhile. If I have a gripe, I can easily track down someone on the sales floor.

Re:Interesting article

[TGK]

There are upsides to all this too. Yes, your late model sports car is tracked at all times... which makes your movements pretty much public. At the same time, the same equipment that tracks your sports car can also allert police if you're in an accident, automaticly dispatching an ambulance (based on the delta V of the impact). The same network can determine instantly who you ran into, what lane they were in and what they were doing, and from that get a pretty good idea of who's at fault. State law is referenced and depending on the severity of damage (from a self diagnostic) the accident is reported to your insurance company who gets to work on the claim before you've even steped out of the car.

Me? I'm liking that system.

The money you spend, authenticated by its unique chip, drops the counterfiting rate substantialy. This stabilizes US currency and could have an overall beneficial effect in the long run (ok.. it's a long shot). As for tracking who had what monies where and what they were spent on... taxes get lots easier when there's never a recipt to keep. Everyone can do the long form and the short form in the same amount of time... lots of money spent... and saved.

would this be a good thing?

[PeeOnYou2]

frozen dinners might automatically give cooking instructions to microwave ovens.

Dinner: Ahhh too hot... cool it down a bit..
Mic: Shaddap before I make you wish you didn't open your mouth...
Dinner: Why I oughta....

This would be rather amusing, no? :)

Hello, we have been there for years

[jukal]

Which part of this is news? This area became hyped about 2 years ago. I don't mean to say that there should not be news on this subject, but the introduction was a bit... umm... exaggerated :)

There's couple of articles on the same area in here.

I thought of this

[Graspee_Leemoor]

I wish I had patented it. I had this idea about 2 years' ago, and to be fair probably a lot of other people did too.

The concept is simple- putting tags on everything which just gives them a unique id. Then you create a bridge between the internet and the physical world.

Examples:

1) Your car HUD can warn you of drivers who have been "modded down" when you see them on the road.

2) In the store, you can look up reviews of consumer electronics items by scanning the item.

3) Email people you walk past on the street if they have made their email public- also dating services can tell you if you are compatible, if they are single etc.

4) Scan tags on famous landmarks and get taken to pages of info on them.

5) Each shop and cafe you walk past has a tag so you can go to its home page and check its prices and offers.

6) Returning stolen items to their owners (if you make the tags non-removeable).

I'm sure you can think of many more applications...

graspee

Re:I thought of this

[AmigaAvenger]

1) Your car HUD can warn you of drivers who have been "modded down" when you see them on the road.

Only after you view a few ads first, this bad driver brought to you by All state insurance, protecting you from bozos like this.

2) In the store, you can look up reviews of consumer electronics items by scanning the item.

Hmm, no chance for bias there... How many honest reviews do you see in stores now?

3) Email people you walk past on the street if they have made their email public- also dating services can tell you if you are compatible, if they are single etc.

Great, drive by spamming. By the time this happens spam will have taken over email anyway.

Maybe I'm just more cynical, but there is always a way to exploit any new technology, and that trend is only getting worse, much worse.

Re:I thought of this

[Surak]

I thought of this as well, a few times in different incarnations. The idea started when I was in high school... my computer operations teacher there had written a system of taking attendance that used barcodes. Each student in each class had a COBOL card (yes, kiddies, actual PUNCH CARDS were used :) that had a barcoded sticker attached to it. Absent students had their punch cards turned in, I believe. These were scanned in.

My teacher had thought of the idea of using a "card hopper" that could scan the barcode. My wild imagination said, hell, who needs barcodes. Use little micro RF transmitters, each transmitting a unique signal. Read them all at once. :)

Anyway, my imagination was quite wild and the next logical step was hey, if you could do this for students, you could do this for ANYTHING. So when people started talking ID chips for people and then now ID chips for products, I wasn't the least bit surprised. What I was more surprised about is that no one thought of this sooner. :)

Home invasion will never be the same...

[Morky]

This will be great for burglars. Just drive down the street with a high-powered RF scanner and inventory every house before deciding on the one with the best stuff.

Re:Home invasion will never be the same...

[dbitter1]

As I work for an integration company that sells RFID equipment (Shameless Plug with more information), that just won't happen with the current generation of technology.

The best passive tags (those that don't require their own power source) are expensive, (~$4 ea) and have a maximum range of about 15ft if you jack up the power on the antenna.

With an array of antennas (the usual configuration for warehouses, etc) on the more common tags (~$.50 in six figure quantitites), the nominal range is about seven feet (with two antennas, (one on each side) you can build a path wide enough to drive a forklift thru and scan everything on the pallet.

Here's the kicker, for you anarchist types: I havent found a tag yet (and we deal with about six different types of tag technology) that will still read when wrapped in aluminum foil.

And, for the record, we aren't talking about the anti-theft tags commonly used at retail shops- these are the tags that actually have enough memory (8b-8K) to do something useful. (Although it would probably work for them too, haven't tried it ;p)

It was a bad idea then and now, still.

[Rhinobird]

Who needs this? seriously? The part about being able to just push you cart through a checkstand and having the totals come up seems like a good idea...and that's about it.

• frozen dinners might automatically give cookng instructions to microwave ovens.
  
  OR you could read the instructions
  
• A wine lover could look on a computer screen and see what's in her wine cellar
  
  OR she could, i don't know, go down into her cellar? How far could it be?
  
• Prescription drug bottles could work together to send you a warning if the combination of pills you're about to swallow would be toxic.
  
  God forbid you acutally talk to your DOCTOR about all those pills your taking.
  
• The eyeglass thing is a red herring too. Been wearing glasses since 3rd grade, everytime I 'lose' them, they turn out to be on my face.
  

I guess what I'm trying to say is, just cause it's new (and fangled, no less), doesn't mean it has to be shoved into every thing. Do your lightbulbs REALLY need webservers? Does your microwave REALLY need to be able to check your email? It seems like everytime they get soembody to say something like this, they all come up with the most ludicrous ideas for how to use this tech. For instance, why didn't he suggest meshing these things with pressure sensors and putting them into your tires. Then have you car tell you that you have a low tire and whatnot. I am going to shut up now, because lack of sleep and this cold are making ramble.

Re:It was a bad idea then and now, still.

[Rhinobird]

How do you pattern recognize that bag of popcorn that's sandwiched in between paper towels and your box of frosted chocolate sugar bombs. When I go shopping the cart is full to the brim, there's just stuff in there that no camera would be able to see. Which would be a moot point if everything had a radio ID tag...

Re:It was a bad idea then and now, still.

[ScumSucker]

>>frozen dinners might automatically give cookng instructions to microwave ovens.

>OR you could read the instructions

The real potential here is not to empower the lazy, but rather to actually get frozen food to cook right in a microwave oven. For instance, if manufacturers of microwave ovens and manufacturers of frozen foods (TV dinners) actually coordinated on a program like this, each dinner might cook differntly in every microwave... simply, it would cook in whatever manner was required to do the best job.

>>A wine lover could look on a computer screen and see what's in her wine cellar

>OR she could, i don't know, go down into her cellar? How far could it be?

The hidden power here isn't for the lady with the wine cellar as much as it is for say someone who has recently moved... and has 200 boxes sitting in his/her garage. Imagine being able to move-in and actually find where you put that hammer....

>>Prescription drug bottles could work together to send you a warning if the combination of pills you're about to swallow would be toxic.

>God forbid you acutally talk to your DOCTOR about all those pills your taking.

>The eyeglass thing is a red herring too. Been wearing glasses since 3rd grade, everytime I 'lose' them, they turn out to be on my face.

Think outside of the box here. This could be a real boon to the elderly. Whether or not the advances come in the form as described in the article or in some other ways (such as an elderly person being able to just call out to the room "where are my glasses" or "where is my medicine bottle"), being able to find items "lost" in your house is potentially very useful for those with failing memories.

Re:It was a bad idea then and now, still.

[Silk]

You've missed the point completely.

• Frozen dinners giving cooking instructions to microwave ovens
• 
  Have you ever read the directions for microwave oven food preparation? You're usually given a range of time to cook the food and then a disclaimer telling you that microwave oven cooking times may vary. This is because ovens have different amount of power. A frozen dinner would tell the oven exactly how much energy it needs to be cooked properly and the oven would adjust its power accordingly.
  
  
• The wine lover seeing what's in her wine cellar
• 
  It's very easy to walk down to the cellar and look at all the bottles of wine you have. I don't disagree with you there but a person who keeps 2 or 3 cases of wine in the cellar wouldn't use RFIDs. A wine collector with several hundred bottles of wine of different vintages, from different wineries would benefit from RFIDs immensely. A visual inspection of all the bottles might miss the one you actually want. Besides, taking the bottles out of their racks gives a person a chance to drop it. If you've ever watched Northern Exposure you know the kind of collector that would benefit from this scenario.
  
  
• Prescription drug bottles warning the consumer of contraindications
• 
  At this point you're depending on the knowledge of one person. No matter how skilled a doctor is, there is no way she can know every lethal combination of prescribed medications. Doctors know the interactions of certain drugs, typically the ones they most commonly prescribe. Once you're prescribed a medication that isn't very common, you're putting your trust in the doctor's ability to look up the information properly in the reference books she has available. While this works most of the time, there are instances when it doesn't. RFIDs in prescription drugs wouldn't be used to replace the doctor but to augment her ability to give you the correct information about the medications you're about to ingest.

Re:It was a bad idea then and now, still.

[Rhinobird]

No I haven't.

• TV dinners are a little more complex than just popping in the microwave and zapping until hot. I live off those icky Banquet dinners. Instructions involve heating for a time period, striring something and heating for another time period. Might as well push the buttons to set the time period too cause you still have to fiddle with things.
  
  
• point taken, but then again, something like this would be great for anything dealing with inventory problems, and you need large quantaties to inventory to make a system like this worthwhile. Not many people have a need for something like this, they just don't have that much stuff.
  
  
• The RFID won't help in this situation unless there is a large database of drugs/side effects/interactions built to show the doctor what's what. But once the database is there, the RFID isn't essential and could only be used in limited cercomstances. Your doctor SHOULD have a list of the medications he prescibed you in your file. The main thing I can think of that might make this useful, is for inventory control in the pharmecy. Making sure you get the right drug in the correct amounts. And that is still not what I would consider 'consumer side', more like the back end of a Walmart than my living room.
  

Re:It was a bad idea then and now, still.

[ibbey]

The RFID won't help in this situation unless there is a large database of drugs/side effects/interactions built to show the doctor what's what. But once the database is there, the RFID isn't essential and could only be used in limited cercomstances. Your doctor SHOULD have a list of the medications he prescibed you in your file. The main thing I can think of that might make this useful, is for inventory control in the pharmecy. Making sure you get the right drug in the correct amounts. And that is still not what I would consider 'consumer side', more like the back end of a Walmart than my living room.

What about OTC drugs? Or how about drugs prescribed by a different doctor? You're right, your doctor should always know ALL drugs that you're taking, and you should educate yourself as well, since who knows whether your doctor really knows what he's talking about or not. A compuerized database would go along way towards that education. Pharmacies already have such databases, & you generally get a printout of information when you get a prescription. But these tags would make it trivial to let anyone get this information by simply gathering there various drugs together.

I think you've missed the real point about these tags. They don't exist for you and me. They exist for corporations & the government. Articles such as this one suggest whiz-bang features that will probably never see the light of day, solely to build customer acceptance. Even if you discount the potentially invasive uses for these tags, they still are pretty evil. There main reasons for existing is to cut expenses & increase sales. If you run a grocery store, and 90% of your customers check themselves out, you can get rid of 90% of your checkers. Or say you're in the grocery store & you put a gallon of milk in your cart. Suddenly, you're bombarded from all sides with cereal ads. Personally, I don't want to see any more ads then I'm already forced to see.

speaking of self-serve grocery checkouts

[fons]

In my local Delhaize supermarket (part of the Delhaize group like the Food Lion chain) registered users can grab a small barscanner (somewhat bigger than the cueat)at the entrance of the store and scan everything they want to purchase theirselves.

When you're finished you put the scanner in a terminal which prints your receipt. with this receipt you go to a special (selfscanning only) checkout to pay.

No lines, saves time

You can always see how musch you're spending

You can bag while you shop, saves time

Stealing is pretty easy this way but i wouldn't there because there are random checks. And if you get caught there are evere punishments :)

It's a neat and cool system but i haven't seen it anywhere else? Has anybody else seen this system before?

Re:speaking of self-serve grocery checkouts

[fons]

Of course, it's pretty fun to see the occasional dhcp logs on their screens...

They have DHCP logs? So they must be connected in some kind of wireless network? That's so cool!

The ones used in my supermarket keep the price-database in memory (i think). The database gets uploaded everytime you store it in the terminal (i think)

Re:speaking of self-serve grocery checkouts

[Emil Brink]

At least one chain of really-big supermarkets here in Sweden use this system, too. So it's spreading, yeah. Haven't tried if myself though.

Re:Kind of like

[JPriest]

DivX is just a codec, most of the media stuff I download is using it. But I do agree that there will be a "second coming" in the tech sector. Some of the reasons are covered by THG on the MS WinHEC conference. MS is going to move longhorn GIU, connect the PC to the TV and a few other in-home multimedia devices. This will bring out a new generation of higher power graphics cards (the 3Dlabs card yesterday possibly first in that series). MS is going to try and make use of UPnP and later IPv6 will add to that. In less then 4 years you might be upgrading the firmware for your microwave, coffee maker, and main kitchen controller over the internet. Let's throw in a big screen TV, DVD writer/recorder, 500 disk DVD changer, and some voice recognition household stuff. Might not happen tomorrow but it's far from over.

I confidently predict

[Anne Thwacks]

Any time soon, my lettuce will spoof the fridge's IP and order its own mayo, using the pizza's credit card.

Sorry, where's the demand?

[sam_handelman]

The reason that we've spent all these billions of dollars to set up the internet, for people to communicate with people, is because we, and by we I mean the human race, really want to communicate with eachother.

My can of deodorant has no intrinsic desire to socialise with it's own kind. Whence, then, comes the impetus to enable it to do so?

If a consumer good is valuable enough to justify this kind of outlay (in a commercial setting) then it is expensive enough to have car-salesman types wander the floor pressuring people to buy it. Unless these built-in chips talk and engage in high pressure sales tactics (here's a cool one, "please, buy me, or I will be tortured horribly and dumped on the scrap heap!") I don't see the percentages.

As regards things that talk to things after you've bought them; there are merits of doing this with every consumer device that already has a computer chip built into it. However, this is far less of a revolution than when we put computer chips into our cars in the first place, but we weren't thinking about "revolutions" back then so it was just progress.

In order to qualify as a revolution, it has to substantively alter the way we, human beings, live. Internetwork protocol has done this, at least in my case. However, while communicating with city traffic control may vastly alter driving from your car's point of view, it'll make only a slight difference to you, the driver. It's a nice trick but hardly a revolution.

The revolution will come when people talk to machines directly, through TSA (today's sinister accronym, my favorite is DNI, or direct neural interface.)

The next struggle against the intervention-of-big-things-in-our-little-lives will come not when built in chips start monitering our shopping habits - b/c IF YOU DIDN'T BUY IT WITH A CREDIT CARD BIG BROTHER DOESN'T CARE - but when the government tries to restrict my right to have robotic claws, replace my eyes with digital cameras, etc.

Re:Sorry, where's the demand?

[Rhinobird]

Tags for stores are one thing, but do you have any desire to KEEP the tag? Which brings up environmental concerns now. How do you get rid of these tags? just chuck them in the garbage? Do they contain any elemnts that might be considered toxic? When they talk about printable organic RFIDs, what do they mean? The chemical definition of organic or the new wave definition of organic? This is on top of the questionable tone of the article which seems to imply that this'll be a boon to the consumer, when, it would more aptly be a boon for the retailer. Just think about real time inventories combined with data mining techniques and customer tracking (membership/discount cards)

Re:Sorry, where's the demand?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

I don't have deodorant, therefore I have no friends.

In other news, I just took a lego referee and a lego coffee machine and built a wicked lego coffee cyborg out of them. Heheh. Oh the joy.

graspee

Re:Kind of like

[MiTEG]

Ummm... I believe he is talking about Divx, Circuit City's failed attempt at creating a pay-per-play DVD system. It's interesting to note that Divx was called a technology "before its time" so maybe that time is now.

Read up on the history of the DivX codec, and you'll see it was originally called "DivX ;-)" as a gesture to make of the Circuit City technology that the others so vehemently opposed. I can't find the sites now, but about 2 years ago there was a great article about the developement of the DivX ;-) codec and I'd highly recommend reading it if you can find it.

Re:All the cool things have already been invented

[blankmange]

What an unfortunate way to look at life -- to say:

We are done making cool invention(s).

is a defeatist view of the world and the creativity of humans. A century ago, people could not envision the computer as it is today, wireless communications as they are today.... To utter such ridiculous statements is akin to saying you don't think that humanmind has lost the ability to go beyond the known and delve into the unknown (then making it known and a new conundrum...). How depressing.

My thoughts on the matter.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

There once was a price tag from Kmart
that had slashdot crying it was too smart
what they didn't know
was the price would be low
when you hacked the WinCE at it's heart

I live in Cincinnati...

[stiv]

..and when cincinnati.com is on the cutting edge of technology you should be afraid, very afraid!

Too complicated

[basilisk128]

All this talk about connecting appliances into a network is ludicrus... sometimes a toaster is just a toaster. We don't need 'super appliances' that think, they would suffer from the vcr problem of being too complicated to use/control/program and most people would be stuck with the factory settings that they might not like.

Re:Too complicated

[Kaiwen]

sometimes a toaster is just a toaster. We don't need 'super appliances' that think

No? Imagine the toaster that can brown your toast to perfection, with no user intervention required. White, whole wheat, rye, thin-sliced, thick-sliced, wheat-thins, leavened or unleavened. The toaster automatically senses what you put in, remembers YOUR idea of perfection (no more arguing with the wife over who left the toaster set to "dark"; it was probably you anyway), and suddenly "burnt to a crisp" becomes something that used to happen to your grandparents.

Now take another step back. Anyone who's ever tried to put together a gourmet meal in his own kitchen can tell you by far the hardest part is the timing -- getting the pheasant under glass, the beef souffle, the Stove Top stuffing -- AND the toast -- all finished at the same time. Now imagine a wired kitchen. Pop the turkey roast in the oven, the frozen veggies in the nuker, the whole wheat in the toaster, and tell your kitchen you want all the accessories to be ready at the same time as the bird. The oven, monitoring the turkey, informs the nuker when there's seven minutes to go so the nuker knows when to start defrosting. At the 45 second mark the toaster kicks in, and 45 seconds later you have a turkey roasted to perfection, veggies steaming hot, and golden brown toast all waiting together. And the whole time you were watching WWF re-runs in the living room. Course, that's not to mention that your oven knows seventy three different ways to roast duck, a hundred and seven ways to bake a cake, and three hundred and twelve ways to broil salmon, all courtesy of your DSL Internet connection. Throw in a two-job, on-the-go family with no time to spend deciphering recipe books, and calling this kind of self-orchestrating, fully-automated kitchen "marketable" would be the understatement of the millenium.

they would suffer from the vcr problem of being too complicated to use/control/program and most people would be stuck with the factory settings that they might not like.

Just the opposite. Imagine a VCR networked with a time server, and that flashing "12:00" goes the way of burned toast (see above). Imagine a VCR that connects to an online database of TV schedules, and you'll never accidentally tape the wrong channel -- or the right channel at the wrong time -- again. Want more? Imagine a VCR that knows you never miss Babylon Five and considerately tapes tonight's episode for you even though you forgot to tell it to do so. Imagine a VCR that automatically adjusts to last minute schedule changes. Imagine a networked VCR that, connecting to an online database, can not only confirm that yes you did see that actress in another movie just last week, but even show you the scene. Imagine stumbling into the middle of an interesting movie on HBO and wishing you'd caught the whole thing. Pas de problem for your VCR -- just tell it to record the next occurance; you don't even need to know when it is. The VCR will inform you when the task is accomplished -- or tell you exactly which local video stores stock it if you just can't wait. Imagine a VCR that monitors your viewing habits so that it can flag upcoming events of potential interest.

Yeah -- I'd buy that VCR.

When Things Start to Think

[dmorin]

Sorry, it's early and I'm too lazy to look up a link for this book, but it describes exactly this. For everybody that says "well, duh, I thought of that years ago..." the problem has always been that you need to create a technology for an id mechanism that essentially costs you less than a penny, because you're going to be throwing them all away. The author of this book talks about the id tag that you often find in books and clothes, which is really just a boolean -- it's either activated (in which case the alarms will go off when you walk through the field) or its not, in which case you can ignore it. What you really need for an id is something that will store, oh, 64 bits or something like that? as well as having a way to get that information back after the fact.

Having said that, there's an article in the most recent issue of MIT Tech Review that talks about a company in Philadelphia that has done exactly that. Created a tag that has network abilities, and a teeny bit of storage, all smaller than a dime and at the cost of "pennies."

d

OO, etc

[Alien54]

So this would be a case of Object Oriented techniques, being applied to ... Objects?

Pardon me if it seems that the languag is getting just a little too recursive here, or something.

Tags for everything

[eap]

Does this mean I can call them up and they will be able to tell me where my other sock is?

I dont want my glasses talking to my blender.

[Bowie J. Poag]

Ah, yes. Network everything. That'll solve a whole host of problems, like.......uhh... See, I always wished that my...uh......errr..

(*cough*CUECAT*cough*..)..

The whole point of invention is to solve a problem. The fact that my toaster lacks a login prompt doesn't qualify as a "problem" to anyone. I don't want a programmable heat grid in my toaster so I can burn little designs into my English muffins. I just want a friggin English muffin that isn't burnt on the outsides and soggy in the middle. Solve that first. I don't want a friggin SQL database running on my fridge. I want one that doesn't make my ice cubes smell, and no amount of TCP/IP is going to fix that. To my knowledge, there is no "Ice Cube Scent Removal" RFC.

The problem with whiz-bang ideas like this is, like the CueCat, that they don't solve any problems. Infact, they try to solve a problem that never existed in the first place. So lets suppose I have my whole apartment wired. My aquariums have webcams, my dishwasher floods both my network and my kitchen floor, and my television watches me instead of me watching it. What have I gained, other than an ego-erection? Bragging rights over my nerdy friends? Or a LAN crowded with garbage traffic, none of which will ever be used or implemented in any form other than for novely and amusement.

Put that in your socket and sniff it.

Cheers,

Re:I dont want my glasses talking to my blender.

[ibbey]

The problem with whiz-bang ideas like this is, like the CueCat, that they don't solve any problems.

Actually, you're wrong. It doesn't solve a problem FOR YOU. Advertisers, governments, and the like LOVE this stuff, though, because it allows them to very easily keep track of everything you do. Whether you tend to be paranoid or not, this kind of technology should -definitely- make you think.

RIAA can't avoid this

[famazza]

RIAA can't avoid this convergence, they can't avoid the connection between their incompatible audio system and the computer, and as everybody here knows if it is in the computer there's no way to avoid user to do whatever he wants.

So I think that RIAA must find (again) another way to avoid the so called mp3-piracy (IMHO the problem is the CD-R drives, but...)

*yawn*

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Gershenfield and Hawley have been working on this one for ages over at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge. Hardly news. PARC also, naturally, is in on it.

There's actually something called the 'Things that Think' Consortium working in this direction. Swatch is in it too; remember in the Barcelona Olympics how you could buy a special edition Swatch with an electronic tag in it, prepaid to allow you entrance to the events? Well, that was in 1992, a decade ago.

So in other words, what we have here hardly qualifies as news. Ubiquitous computing has been a work in progress for ages and will remain so for a few ages more; it's not vaporware, it just needs time.

But honestly, I fail to see why this qualifies as newsworthy, and a submission about successful experiments into getting monkeys to move a cursor with mind control isn't.

This kind of thing is what keeps me from subscribing, to be perfectly frank. Maybe when story submission/acceptance begins to follow more democratic guidelines like the moderation system.

Sounds like Cooltown

[jregel]

This sounds a bit like Cooltown which is HPs project to get everything connected. It's pretty Linux-centric too. The UK magazine has Cooltown as it's cover feature this month.

Will it help me find my glasses?

[thumbtack]

Now if they tie it to a clapper or some such so that I can find my glasses, then I might be tempted to go along with it.

It truth it really seems that acceptance of something like this will likely depend on how it's marketed. Help find old folks when they go drifting off from the nursing home, be used to determine that someone has fallen and can't get up. (6 hours without moving at the foot of the steps is a good sign) Imagine a lost or missing child, stolen artwork, etc. I can see viable, sensible uses for the technology, but at the same time have concerns over how it could be misused.

Things are too dumb to talk

[Animats]

The basic problem with "things talking to things" is that most of them don't have enough smarts to say anything useful. An automated kitchen that could actually make meals automatically would be useful. But automated inventory control for the home kitchen isn't that useful, especially if the system needs ongoing human attention.

Commercial kitchens, yes. (Whatever happened to the big McDonald's robotic kitchen project they announced a few years back?) Offices and factories, probably. (Any place that has property ID tags now is a good candidate.) Automated checkout at stores, maybe. Home automation, no. Home automation gear has been around for decades, and remains a niche product.

If you really want to do something in this area, develop a cheap device that can make an estimate of the number of people in a room, and use it to control heating, ventilating, and air conditioning. HVAC systems for classrooms, conference rooms, and such should have both a thermostat for temperature and a people counter for airflow. Fan speed should crank up as the number of people increases. It would probably even save money, because empty rooms can go down to minimum airflow.

"Smart Carts" at Giant Foods

[SamMichaels]

I remember several years ago, the shopping carts at Giant Foods (huge grocery chain around here) were fitted with LCD screen and sensors. It would help you locate products, find your way around the store, etc. It would also bring up ads and talk about the stuff that you're passing at the moment.

Miserably failed and they removed them...but it was a neat idea. Probably way before its time.

Re:"Smart Carts" at Giant Foods

[Animats]

No, failed dot-com. That was a service offered by a third party with an advertising-based business model. It wasn't something grocery stores did on their own.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

[3seas]

The point of which is that any good intention can be converted to wrongful use.

Imagine all the ways such technology can be used in wrong ways, for apparently the supporters of this either have blinders on or plans to abuse it.

Certainly we all have been hearing the word "privacy" one gawd aweful a-hell-of-a-lot especially in sales pitches where your privacy should be a default thing to respect by others and only invaded with your permission (not the other way around causing yo uto constantly be fighing for your privacy).

Imagine a criminal taking inventory of your home, in their effort to take from you....or even kill you.

Re:The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

[3seas]

Another interesting thought is along the lines of clearing the tag, like the stick-on security labels found on many products (you know the little magnetic stickers that stores have to deactivate so you can leave the store without setting off alarms)

As a matter of privacy you understand.....But how much would such a deactivate unity cost (not to mention your need to spend the time to deactivate tags on everything you buy in order to enforce your privacy).

I used to live in Cincy...MOD UP!

[Fastball]

I read an article in Penthouse (bear with me) that described a study in which Cincinnati had the fewest tech jobs per 2000 overall jobs than any other metropolitan area in the country. San Jose had something like 300/2000; Cincinnati, 30/2000.

I don't doubt this. Relevent tech jobs in that frickin' town are sparse. It's a town of salesfolk and chemical engineers, most of which work for GE and P&G. You're either a good bullshitter or you're trying to make a better diaper.

If your glasses are talking to your blender

[artemis67]

...it can only be about where to hide your body after they've figured out a way to puree you.

1/9th of tech revolution

[3seas]

The general idea of enabling a computer to identify things in physical reality, or even the idea of identification of things in the abstract world of computing is not the tech revolution but only a part of it.

There are nine action constants, one of which is the ability to IDentify and cause a sequence of actions to take place upon such identification.

The other eight parts (also including the 8th) [using the metaphor of the
Matrix movie):

AI (Alternate Interface) Switch
You start or begin things and stop or end things.

PK (Place Keeper) Apoc
You need to know where you are in doing something, keep track of things,
especially if you need to set something aside to do other things before
you can go back to something and continue.

OI (Obtain Input) Tank
You get things to pass to other things (variables).

IP (InPut from) Mouse
You select where your getting something from and what to get
when you get things.

OP (OutPut to) Dozer
You select where your sending something to and what to send
when you send things.

SF (do StufF) Neo
You do things a step at a time, even when your doing more than
one thing at a time, each you do a step at a time. And the things
you do can be or include doing the nine things.

IQ (Index Queue) Morpheus
You look up what things mean, and use the meanings to (SF)
"do StufF". Often the meaning is from a Selected Abstraction Set.

ID (IDentify things) Trinity
Sometimes you gotta know what something is before you know what to do.
So you test things to see what they are. Once you know what something is,
you can (SF) "do StufF".

KE (Knowledge Enable) Cypher
When looking up or testing something (IQ and ID), you may only want a
certain part of it. This "KE" helps you narrow down what you want to
look up (IQ) or test (ID). When you look up a word in a dictionary,
you limit your search to the section starting with the first letter
of the Word.

These NINE things can easily be made available in the form
of computer functionality, easy for us to use.

And With This we can Automate The things We Do thru computers (not that
this is not what the programming industry does, but this is for the
general end user.)

Or in other words, once you have identified something, whatdo you want to
do with it or based on it's existing?

for more information see my home page.

Re:I predict another revolution......

[Kaiwen]

countries where this kind of thing will not be tolerated by the public at large

Trust me, there aren't any. Taiwanese, for example, love the idea of cameras monitoring one's every move. For Taiwanese, security trumps privacy any day of the week.

If it's tolerated in America, where privacy is so highly valued, it's tolerated everywhere else, too.

glasses....

[josepha48]

.. eye glasses or drinking glasses???

they going to track what I see or what I drink?

Re:All the cool things have already been invented

[rnturn]

Wasn't there a similar proclamation made around a hundred years ago regarding discoveries? Someone (Lord Kelvin, if memory serves) stated that all the important scientific discoveries had been made and that any further work would involve mere refinements. I think he was proven wrong.

You don't think that as long as there are problems to solve someone will come up with novel ways of solving them? (Jeez, if you do, how jaded can you get?) Some of these solutions could be `cooler' than anything you listed -- which incidently only covered communications and transportation. There's (ahem) just a few more fields that might attract an inventor's attention.

Just think of the things that have been discovered in the past 50 years that no one's found practical uses for yet. Superconductivity hasn't really made it out of the labs. When it does it could be as significant as electric power or (every Slashdot addict's favorite invention) the semiconductor.

``of course genetically engineer ourselves. If that happens.''

IMO, that would be akin (to borrow an analogy from Philip Greenspun) to: a bunch of curious schoolkids, after having broken into a Boeing 747, flipping all the switches to see what happens. I'd be more than a little worried if the biotech industry starts moving in this direction. (Oops! We didn't think tweaking that gene would do that! Sorry.)

perverse use of OO

[cowtamer]

Don't you people see that this is what you get when you have Java programmers designing real world stuff? The world is finally becoming Object Oriented!!! Argh...

TVDinner tvDinner=tvDinnerFactory::getTVDinner()

tvDinner.getBought(); //implemented via RFID

if(tvDinner.isBought()){
MicrowaveOven mwOven=mwOvenFactory::getMicrowaveOven();
mwOven.cook(tvDinner.getCookTime());
}

et cetera.

Simply abominable...