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Smart Bricks to Monitor Buildings of the Future
Roland Piquepaille writes "Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a "smart brick" which can monitor a building's health and report its conditions wirelessly. "This innovation could change the face of the construction industry," said Chang Liu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. "We are living with more and more smart electronics all around us, but we still live and work in fairly dumb buildings. By making our buildings smarter, we can improve both our comfort and safety." Built into a wall, these bricks could monitor a building's temperature, vibration and movement. Such information could be vital to firefighters battling a blazing skyscraper, or to rescue workers ascertaining the soundness of an earthquake-damaged structure. These researchers also think these devices could help monitoring nurseries, daycares and senior homes. You'll find more details in this summary."
Do you really believe this rubbish ?
At a decent fire or after a serious earthquake or your fine logic in the bricks will be fucked up and of no use at all.
However, there is use for such logic in bricks. But not when earthquakes are there.
It's rather simple to reprogram the sensors to wiretap people and communication devices. If you are really clever you can get even 3D low-res infrared images from the rooms. Not good for face recognition, but enough for monitoring the location of people. And, hey, you can even couple this with RFID tags. These thing will be on anything you purchase in a few years and they fit prefectly into this setting.
Guess why US Army and NSA are sponsoring research in nanotech.
Only fools believe this "helping building" nonsense. But, hey, these chains are just there to protect us from running away and harming us...
Owner of a Mensa membership card.