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The Internet of Things - What is a Spime?
CoolVibe writes "From the abstract in the talk: "World-renowned Science Fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling will outline his ideas for SPIMES, a form of ubiquitous computing that gives smarts and 'searchabiliity' to even the most mundane of physical products. Imagine losing your car keys and being able to search for them with Google Earth." It's a very interesting lecture given by Bruce Sterling about something we might see in the near future. The lecture can be viewed here on Google Video."
By the time any of this technology could ship we'd probably have thought controlled car locks. No need for keys then.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"Imagine losing your car keys and being able to search for them with Google Earth."
Imagine a thief doing the same?
Imagine letting anyone who wants to steal your car be able to search for your keys on Google Earth.
Simon's Rock College
But if I can imagine finding my lost car keys on Google Earth, I sure can imagine trying to find someone else's car keys on Google Earth.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Imagine losing your car keys and being able to search for them with Google Earth.
http://static.flickr.com/108/261905722_d2912c0465
Still waiting for them to add it to Earth.
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/googl e%202084.jpg
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
But, all I could think about the whole time is about those darn car keys. I kept hearing in my head my parents calling me: "Son, I need you to come look at the computer. Google keeps telling me my car keys are in the house, but I've looked all over for them. I think Google is broken again."
First car keys, then a small injection when you are born and now 'Big Brother' knows where you are.
As long as you can reticulate them, of course.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It's called RFID chips. Of course it doesn't have the long range abilities the summary seems to suggest, but it's still pretty close. And they are cheap.
Imagine losing your car keys and having someone else find them with Google Earth. Imagine someone without a warrant keeping track of your car keys.
I don't usually wear a tin-foil hat, but this idea has exploit written all over it.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Spi Me. If you can find your carkeys on Google, then so can Google. And if Google can, the government you're under can find your carkeys too. Normally you're near where your carkeys are, or maybe your cellphone, or maybe the governmental id card.
God spoke to me.
"Imagine the government being able to find your exact location using Google. Err, I mean your car keys."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Any self-respecting drunk will make sure he always lives within staggering distance of a liquor store.
There is nothing about being able to use Google Earth to find your keys which implies by its very nature the ability for Google itself to find your keys, any more than the ability for Google Desktop to find your pr0n implies by its very nature the ability for Google itself to find your pr0n.
I want my home computer to be able to have disconnected local extensions enabling me to perform searches on things which Google itself doesn't consider relevant.
If I really wanted to, I could (right now!) go out to radioshack and get everything required to set up a Home Positioning System- like a GPS, but with less G. I could then interface the data from that with Google Earth using its existing extension mechanisms and- without Google knowing a thing about it get Google Earth to tell me where my keys are.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Imagine losing your car keys and being able to search for them with Google Earth
...
By the time any of this technology could ship we'd probably have thought controlled car locks. No need for keys then.
If I end up so far from my car keys that I need GOOGLE EARTH to find them, I have failed miserably...
Or had a really good time. I suppose it could go either way (or both).
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I'll be able to enjoy spam 24hrs/day and 7days/week, targetted specifically towards my taste in women, tool sizes, drugs, and vista preferences... all through my car keys, my nail cutter, my shaving appliance, my dishes, my glasses, my boots, and my underwear. I can hardly wait.
I'll be more enthusiastic about "ubiquitous computing" when I see something that economically and pleasingly replaces the paperback book. Not even close yet.
Have you read my blog lately?
Yah, practical for our future overlords. Run.
I think Vernor Vinge called it a localizer a number of years back.
Not sure what Drexler et al were calling the idea in the late 80s, but they were talking about much the same thing as well as general assemblers and such things as utility fog that could do the same thing.
People have been working on ubi-comp for a long time.
If you're having trouble thinking of realistic use cases, the key is to work from the assumption that rfid and rfid scanners are ubiquitous. Think of things in your home or in your place of business. Now, ask yourself what would it mean to you if you could uniquely identify that item and track its location anywhere in the building, and what if you could do that remotely (with proper safeguards for privacy)?
Now couple this with ubiquitous eletronic mapping of your home and the buildings you spend your day in.
Your Dinner Plates Are Trackable
It's time to do dishes. You have a glass and a small plate at your family computer from that snack you ate while reading the news after work. You have two glasses on the coffee table and one on the sofa from the guests you had over last night. Your son has three plates, a bowl, flatware, and a few glasses up in his room. You left a drinking glass on the washroom counter.
But you don't know that they are there yet! Sure, you could walk into the family room and look around and pick up any you see, but you can do better. Open up your mobile, direct the interface to show the location of all diningware in your home. Now filter that to exclude diningware not already in the kitchen. How do you do that? I don't know, maybe it's as direct as typing "diningware +home -kitchen" into a prompt. But however you do it, now you see on your mobile a layout of your home with red dots indicating the location of diningware you need to round up to wash.
Your Refrigerator Is Queryable
Only it isn't that clunky Refrigerator of the Future you saw in that magazine article.
You're at the grocery store. You're out of milk, low on soy sauce, and out of eggs. But you can only remember the eggs! Open up your mobile. Query "groceries +refrigerator +out" to get a list of groceries that belong in your refrigerator that you are out of: "1. milk, 2. eggs". How does it know what you are out of? After all, if you are out of it, it isn't there. AI? Of course not. It gives a list of groceries that have recently been in your refrigerator but aren't now.
But wait, what about the soy sauce? Well, it's still there, so your query for things you are out of didn't catch it. How can it know you are low on it? Does the soy sauce bottle have a amount remaining meter that can be read? Of course not, let's be realistic! What you did is designate to your fridge when you set it up that the bottom door-shelf is for things you are running low on. You put the soy sauce bottle there last night after the meal to be sure you'd remember - or rather so it would remember - and your fridge has rfid scanners with sufficient granularity to know what is on this shelf. So you rewrite your query: "groceries +refrigerator +out +low" and you get "1. milk, 2. eggs, 3. soy sauce". Aha! Soy sauce, that's what you were missing. Because you configured your fridge like this when you set it up, when you query "low" in the context of "refrigerator" that's becomes an alias for "top left shelf".
Your house would have more rfid scanners than electrical outlets. And everything from a carton of milk to your cat's collar would have an rfid tag.
Other good examples once you make these assumptions? 1) Tracking locations of projectors, televisions, and media carts in the office or school. 2) Tracking locations of books in a library. 813.11A. Where the heck is that? Instead of asking the librarian or following signs through the winding maze of shelves until you find 800xxx, just query it in your mobile and it will show you exactly where it is in the electronically mapped library. Just walk over and pick it up.