Spy Fly

opencity writes "CNN (and AP) reports on the 'Spy Fly' project. "Biologists and technologists at the University of California, Berkeley have spent the past four years developing a tiny robot, called the Micromechanical Flying Insect, that they say will one day fly like a fly." Good technical stuff on the Cal Berkeley page. The Pentagon likes the idea for spying and battlefield deployment but their page has no info about weaponization or command / communication technologies."

Comments

How long until...

[OneFix]

The "bad guys" resort to ... this?

great technology

[brad3378]

could be a great weapon once they figure out how to attach the big friggin' laser to it's head.

Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy

[ScottBob]

A long time ago they had a series of kid's science fiction books about a kid inventor named Danny Dunn, and one book, Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy was about a robotic dragonfly that could fly around and spy on people. He flew it with a helmet and gloves that foretold of modern virtual reality, because he could feel in his gloves whatever the dragonfly landed on. He ended up destroying it in fears the technology would land in the wrong hands and be used for sinister (Orwellian?) purposes. Anybody else remember reading this one?

Terrorists will love that.

[Krapangor]

Imagine a spy fly with a injection system which infects people with serious deseases like Hepatitis A/B/C or AIDS.
Goodbye, Mr. President/Chancellor/King/Gran Genernalissimo.
On the other hand the Mossad can use this system to take out these mad bombing bastards. (The CIA would as usual too lame to kill these retards.)

Re:Terrorists will love that.

[Mr2cents]

Or maybe they'll crash a swarm of them into a large building.

When will society and government learn

[HanzoSan]

That you cannot invest all this money and effort, into destruction, without destroying the world as the result.

"CNN (and AP) reports on the 'Spy Fly' project. "Biologists and technologists at the University of California, Berkeley have spent the past four years developing a tiny robot, called the Micromechanical Flying Insect, that they say will one day fly like a fly." Good technical stuff on the Cal Berkeley page. The Pentagon likes the idea for spying and battlefield deployment but their page has no info about weaponization or command / communication technologies."

This basically means, like with the atomic bomb, the government is using technology for evil purposes.

Why do we need a 350-400 billion military budget yet only a 20 billion dollar school budget?

Please tell me what would happen, if I gave some monkeys, a button, and told the monkey not to push the little red button which ends the world, wait lets take it a step further, lets say I give this power to thousands, millions of monkeys.

How long until one of the monkeys pushes the button?

For scientific minds reading this, the second law of thermodynamics clearly explains in a very logical way, that unless humans are educated and evolve mentally as a whole, expect things to collapse, with technologies like this here, the atomic bomb, soon nano technology, just wait until it gets in the hands of bin laden, the next hitler, hell i wouldnt even trust these technologies in the hands of george bush or the average american.

So why are we busy creating technology after technology without educating people in how to responsibly use these technologies we create? Are we supposed to be proud of our technology which will be used to spy on millions of people, ruin millions of lives, get people killed etc?

Re: wrong questions, wrongly directed phobias

[guybarr]

crawling into people's houses, looking and listening to everything happening in every room

I'm going to risk some karma here, and suggest you're barking up the wrong tree here:

surveilance devices allready exists, they are very cheap and use realy old-fashioned technology (remember Orwell's 1984 was written >60 years ago )

and to the extent the (any) goverment wants to control the ordinary people's lives they can allready do this technologically and financially.

IMHO, the issues of privacy and citizen-state relationship are not technological by nature, but are political issues, and technology rarely changes them.
the only possible exception to the above is of encryption technology. But as for being afraid of miniature mechanical bugs listening to our conversations / sexual activities / whatever I say nothing has changed. The goverment allready has practically indetectable bugs ...

so, contrary to common geek belief, technology will nither greatly help nor greatly impede you in your civil-rights struggle. It's not a technology issue.

but that's just my non-expert oppinion, lets wait and see ...

Re:Everyones nightmare

[thales]

"What good is spending 350-400 billion a year on the military if you only spend 20 billion a year on public schools?"

Whats the good of having a well educated population that is unable to defend itself? Some power mad asshole decides "Oh boy! Suckers ripe for the plucking!"

Why do you assume that throwing money at schools will magicly cause students to become more intrested in learning than in the next album by their favorite band, or if their favorite team will make it to the Super Bowl, or if they can get some good pot this weekend, or if they will get a piece of ass or......