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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:40 PM
Sun - August 24, 2003
Spray On Computing: Just Don't Tumble Dry
European researchers are developing
means to spray computers the size of a grain of sand on to the human body and
other objects. So much for privacy as we know it.
Researchers
at Edinburgh University recently won a £1.3 million grant to create spray-on
computers the size of a grain of sand, Slashdot reports. The tiny CPUs that can sense,
compute, and communicate without wires may be useful for national defense and
for medical applications, such as monitoring heart patients at
home.
Spray-on computing could be a really big deal. If this technology ever becomes cost-effective and widely available, I predict that the following will also occur quickly:
1. Engineers will deploy spray-on computers to monitor temperature and airflow over an aircraft's control surfaces. Pilots will be immediately alerted to changes in temperature that indicate icing on a wing (a similar technology will enable firefighters to immediately assess hot spots in modern office buildings). In addition, each aircraft will continually broadcast its course, altitude, and designation to ground and air-based monitoring stations to better aid in air traffic control.
2. Meteorologists will release spray-on enhanced particulates into storm systems to study airflow patterns and will dust tornado-prone areas, such as Kansas, with grain-sized computers that can provide an early warning system for storm activity.
3. The U.S. military will use dust-sized computers to track enemy troop movements. This not only includes dusting battlefield areas with sensors but will also involve deploying spray-on treated insects to act as living, mobile monitoring devices.
4. Automobiles—or the freeway lanes that they use—will be treated with spray-on computers to aid in traffic-flow analysis by immediately indicating areas of congestion so that dispatchers can efficiently reroute emergency vehicles.
5. Cattle ranchers will brand livestock with spray-on computers so that they can account for every animal. In a similar vein, law enforcement and insurers will advocate the use of spray-on ointments for children on school field trips so they can be located if they become lost or are kidnapped.
6. Products painted with spray-on computers will "announce" themselves to other nearby computers, enabling the creation of ubiquitous, constantly morphing instant messaging and file sharing communities.
7. RFID tags and WozNet will seem embarrassingly quaint. Store product inventories will be tracked without resort to those cumbersome and annoying extraneous ID tags.
8. Magazines treated with spray-on computers will sense when (and how long) each page is exposed to light, bringing Techorati-type tracking capabilities to offline media. Advertisers will know what advertisements and articles are read, when they are read, and how often they are read.
9. Biologists and computer scientists will collaborate to embed miniature computers into biological organisms, such as antibiotics, enabling physicians to better understand and treat the source of an infection.
10. Privacy laws will need to be rewritten. And rewritten again. And again.
Spray-on computing could be a really big deal. If this technology ever becomes cost-effective and widely available, I predict that the following will also occur quickly:
1. Engineers will deploy spray-on computers to monitor temperature and airflow over an aircraft's control surfaces. Pilots will be immediately alerted to changes in temperature that indicate icing on a wing (a similar technology will enable firefighters to immediately assess hot spots in modern office buildings). In addition, each aircraft will continually broadcast its course, altitude, and designation to ground and air-based monitoring stations to better aid in air traffic control.
2. Meteorologists will release spray-on enhanced particulates into storm systems to study airflow patterns and will dust tornado-prone areas, such as Kansas, with grain-sized computers that can provide an early warning system for storm activity.
3. The U.S. military will use dust-sized computers to track enemy troop movements. This not only includes dusting battlefield areas with sensors but will also involve deploying spray-on treated insects to act as living, mobile monitoring devices.
4. Automobiles—or the freeway lanes that they use—will be treated with spray-on computers to aid in traffic-flow analysis by immediately indicating areas of congestion so that dispatchers can efficiently reroute emergency vehicles.
5. Cattle ranchers will brand livestock with spray-on computers so that they can account for every animal. In a similar vein, law enforcement and insurers will advocate the use of spray-on ointments for children on school field trips so they can be located if they become lost or are kidnapped.
6. Products painted with spray-on computers will "announce" themselves to other nearby computers, enabling the creation of ubiquitous, constantly morphing instant messaging and file sharing communities.
7. RFID tags and WozNet will seem embarrassingly quaint. Store product inventories will be tracked without resort to those cumbersome and annoying extraneous ID tags.
8. Magazines treated with spray-on computers will sense when (and how long) each page is exposed to light, bringing Techorati-type tracking capabilities to offline media. Advertisers will know what advertisements and articles are read, when they are read, and how often they are read.
9. Biologists and computer scientists will collaborate to embed miniature computers into biological organisms, such as antibiotics, enabling physicians to better understand and treat the source of an infection.
10. Privacy laws will need to be rewritten. And rewritten again. And again.