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Browsing Reality With Sensor Networks

Posted by timothy on from the hey-what's-going-on-there dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Welcome to the world of 'Reality Mining'! The billions of networked sensors that exist today are generating humongous streams of data. What about 'data mining' this big flow of data and discover our environment in a way that never existed before? Suddenly, sensors would look like pixels and we would start to browse reality as easily as we browse web pages today. Fascinating concept! Some fellows at Accenture Technology Labs are thinking about this and they already have designed some demos of reality mining software. Their demos include web agents, data modeling, GIS systems and much more. They also show how you could detect fires or how you would do virtual shopping. Please read their long article or this shorter summary for a couple of examples."

6 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. This is great, but... by DanthemaninVA1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I started browsing reality around the age of 1, when I learned to WALK.

    1. Re:This is great, but... by darth_MALL · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...while linked to a sophisticated sensor network with colorful node names like "sight", "hearing" and "touch". It just may catch on!

  2. Welcome to the World of Marketing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Vague name with 'mining' - check.
    Gratuitous use of the word 'virtual' - check.
    'Shopping' is involved somehow - check.

    Time to go hustle up some VC like it was 1997!

    1. Re:Welcome to the World of Marketing by pchan- · · Score: 4, Funny

      you're surprised to see this coming from andersen consulting, aka accenture*? they've been virtualising resources, shifting paradigms, and enabling synergies through proactive leveraging of resources for years. now they're mining reality. sure, why the hell not? it's as much bullshit as anything else they do. you know what they say: a consultant is someone who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, keeps your watch, and bills you for it.

      *pronounced "ass-enter"

  3. Open Sensors and Privacy by eutychus_awakes · · Score: 4, Informative

    People have been talking about integrating sensor networks like this for a long time. One issue that comes up often is what to do about privacy - especially with regard to image data. You can put a camera on every building in town - and you can be guaranteed that at least one person per day will object to having their picture taken and used for some open-source data fusion project.

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  4. Re:Boycott Slashdot! by JUSTONEMORELATTE · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I say boycott slashdot until one of the following are met:

    1) We get a Roland Piquepaille section.
    2) Slashdot stops taking kickbacls
    3) Slashdot distributes kickbacks to readers.
    I'd settle for the ability to:
    1: Make Roland Piquepaille a foe
    2: Block my foe's submissions from my view of the front page

    Failing that, howsabout you just ignore his submissions and move on to the next story?
    /me forgot to check the submitter on this one. 'Doh!

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