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SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now'
DeAshcroft writes "EE Times has a piece on progress with the four-year-old DARPA-conceived Smart Dust self-organizing sensor networks. Based on Berkeley's TinyOS and TinyDB open-source projects, the article reports several companies are demonstrating both military and civilian applications. Ars Technica adds background and commentary on issues not discussed in the EET article."
I'm still waiting for my magic server pixie dust...could this fill the role?
A beowulf clu.... nevermind, my bad....
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
This is actually kind of scary. I mean, the advantage is that the enemy doesn't know their being spied on, right? So how soon until this is used for "civilian surveillance"? Next election I'm voting for Nadir.
Smart Dust? I must have the world's most powerful Beowulf cluster under my bed.
Trolling is a art,
If the enemy ever did find out their presence, couldn't they use some kind of microwaves or something to disable the sensors?
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
It's another step toward The Mesh, covered very well in a Small Times cover package last year.
Migod... It can't be. A post that isn't a repeat!
Quick! Archive it for posterity!
Twice.
Shape the motes like spiders... and give them simple commands like "kill Tom Selleck"
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
If we had this tehcnology now, we could sprinkle a load over Iraq to detect chemical weapons residues and radiation above background levels.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Would my Roomba become smarter after cleaning up the dust? Talk about reuse...
My sig left me for a younger user id.
One possible solution to protect against smart dust would to create military buildings with a high internal atmospheric pressure: people who enter the building who create a draft directed at the outside, which should be enough to blow away "smart dust".
At least I hope so... If you cross Total Information Awareness and smart dust you have one scary scenario... =(
And even "clean" (high internal pressure) buildings don't help military units in the fields...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Anybody who's read Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky is already familiar with the concept of sensor-equipped smart dust that has lots of uses. That was a great book, by the way.
SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now'
Sooner than Duke Nukem?
The enemy just needs to battle harden one of these and clear the battlefield.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
What about possible health impacts in the future? I mean, supposing that these things become ubiquitous and the military/government/corporations spread them around for various monitoring purposes, how do they get cleaned up? As technology advances and this "smart dust" gets smaller/finer, what are the implications of inhaling them? (Seems to me battlefields aren't so much of a worry; there are other things more hazardous to health on those. This would only really apply if SmartDust was used a lot for monitoring civilians.)
:)
Not to mention the fact that privacy issues (as usual) rear their ugly head once more. What happens when I pick up a bunch of these on my clothes/shoes from walking around downtown and take them back home with me? Automatic distribution of the dust, deploying a sensor network to residential neighborhoods, collecting all manner of information as the technology develops. What, will I have to install an "EMP chamber" like an airlock in my home to walk through?
Sola Scriptura * Sola Gratia * Sola Fide * Solus Christus * Soli Deo Gloria
The articles never mention the power source for these things. They mention the size will eventually be mere millimeters across, but what kind of battery can you put in something that small?
And if you are restricted to a small battery (or maybe small solarcell) how much power do you have available to broadcast to the other sensors so they can talk to each other.
The technoglogy won't mean much if these things actually become 'DumbDust' after a few minutes (seconds?) of operation.
-Dubya
Okay... so basically, we're talking about particle sized sensors and a built-in networking capability. Sensors meaning heat, sound, light, and whatever else they need to orient themselves like GPS, orientation, etc.
So what's to prevent people from spreading this stuff in public washrooms/baths/changing rooms to spy on people while they undress?
What's to prevent this from being sprinkled onto unsuspecting passerbys and used to basically stalk them and their children?
What's to prevent this from being used on ATM machines or any other place where sensitive information needs to be kept secret from prying eyes and people who seek to commit fraud?
What's to prevent people from using this to gain insider information by spreading it in corporate meeting and board rooms while they are visiting, at production factories during a tour, or even at random hotel rooms for the heck of it?
What's to prevent the abuse of this technology?
I'm not saying the technology doesn't have great and beneficial uses. Military and Security uses come to mind. As does scientific research and observation. It can go a great way to help prevent spousal abuse and domestic violence, tell us when children ARE being abused or if fraud is being committed. It can even help to serve as an effective way of adding home security without all of the cameras. And help to monitor the weak and sickly who might otherwise not be monitored effectively through normal means.
I'm just left wondering whether or not this is a tool/technology which will essentially erradicate privacy.
Winged Power Photography
I spent a little time wondering what it would be like living in a world with total surveilence - a world where someone could be watching or at least recording everything that happens. In some respects it doesn't actually look that bad.
No one would would be in any doubt about whether or not Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. No crime would go unsolved. No one would expect to get away with cheating on their spouse. Lying in general would become far less common. There just wouldn't be much to lie about which couldn't be verified by someone who wanted to.
Of course you would have to get used to the idea that six billion people could, if they wanted to, watch you take a dump every morning. But somehow I suspect that the excitement of voyerism would wear off if every act became a public act. Who knows, maybe we would all be happier if there was no longer any point in maintaining a public mask to cover our private lives.
I worried at first that total surveilence would lend itself too well to totalitarianism. "No crime would go unsolved" really just means that if you do anything the state disapproves of then it would not go unnoticed. But then it occured to me that totalitarianism would have a hard time getting established if eveything happens in the public view. Politicians could not cut deals behind closed doors, the military could not plot coups, the state could not lie to the people about what it is doing.
Living in a world like this would be really different from living in the world as it is, and it would be uncomfortable to people like us who are used to a good deal of privacy. But it wouldn't necessarily be bad - just very different.
Of course total surveilence is not going to happen any time soon. What will happen is an increase in certain types of surveilence by certain people. The way I see it, the problem with this is that we might wind up with a world where the state can watch the people, but the people cannot watch the state, or a world where the US knows exactly what Iraq is up to, but no one knows exactly what the US is up to. This kind of world really would be bad.
So here is a suggestion. Perhaps instead of trying to stem the tide of surveilence, what we should do is try to make sure that it washes over everyone evenly. If the state has this technology, then push for the same technology to be made available to private citizens. If the state wants more information about the people, then push for a more open government, so that the people will also have more information about the state.