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SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now' 143

Posted by michael from the all-we-are-is-dust-in-the-wind dept.
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."
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SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now' More

SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now'

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  • pixie dust (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:02PM (#5182270)
    I'm still waiting for my magic server pixie dust...could this fill the role?

  • Imagine (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ogrez ( 546269 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:02PM (#5182274)
    A beowulf clu.... nevermind, my bad....

  • Oh man (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PhysicsGenius ( 565228 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `rekees_scisyhp'> on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:04PM (#5182291)
    The dust I have is hard enough to get rid of. I don't want it to be smarter.

    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.

    • Re:Oh man (Score:3, Funny)

      by mrjb ( 547783 )
      You think that is bad? Imagine this in case of war.

      To get rid of smart dust, "the enemy", of course, will deploy dumb vacuum cleaners.

      Which after that, having such a huge concentration of smart dust on board, will gain conciousness.

      -- I walk through mindfields...

    • Re:Oh man (Score:3, Funny)

      by Spunk ( 83964 )
      I'm voting for Nadir.

      Your misspelling is highly appropriate :)

    • Re:Oh man (Score:2, Funny)

      by donpardo ( 128815 )
      Next election I'm voting for Nadir

      Didn't he win last time?

    • I would say that it would be a long time before "civilian surveillance" of this kind would occur due to technical difficulties. Currently, the sensors have a difficult time differentiating between an army tank and anything else that is moving. In time, once they have identified an object as a human, the sensors would be confused if you bump into another human, not knowing which one is which. Gathering the detailed information that is necessary to track an individual is many, many years away. Furthermore, the power for these motes are only intended for a period of short-term activity with long terms of inactivity. Trying to follow around a person with any accuracy would be extraordinarily power expensive.

  • Smart Dust? (Score:4, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:04PM (#5182295) Homepage Journal

    Smart Dust? I must have the world's most powerful Beowulf cluster under my bed.

  • Dusting of sensors (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alcohol Fueled ( 603402 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:05PM (#5182299) Homepage
    "The idea was to sprinkle thousands of tiny wireless sensors on a battlefield to monitor enemy movements without alerting the enemy to their presence."

    If the enemy ever did find out their presence, couldn't they use some kind of microwaves or something to disable the sensors?

    • And detecting their presence wouldn't be that hard. Simple electronics would notice a large ammount of radiation being emitted from an empty field.

      -B

      • Re:Dusting of sensors (Score:3, Interesting)

        by artemis67 ( 93453 )
        And detecting their presence wouldn't be that hard. Simple electronics would notice a large ammount of radiation being emitted from an empty field.

        Even simpler than that, I would image. If you've got thousands or tiny systems operating independently out there and chatting on the network, and they suddenly all fell silent, then you have a pretty good idea that something is going on.

        Although, I suppose a really sophisticated army could capture all of the network chatter for, say, half an hour, then zap the sensors.

        To fool the network, just play back the network chatter with updated headers on all of the packets with an updated time stamp.
        • Though I'm not sure how accurate "zapping" the sensors would be, the networks for these dust computers are extraordinarily robust. They are intended to function when most of the sensors are no longer alive.

          Also, the networks are very sensitive to detecting false information. There are many safeguards to prevent these kinds of "byzantine attacks". Remember, these are to be used in battlefield situations, so the army isn't going to allow any crafty enemies to disable the motes except physically.

      • Several points on this. By the time we see any civilian applications (Maybe you'll use them for motion capture of groups?) the military will be using them with point to point communications. Second, you could use the same laser/pickup combo for communication that you use for sensing, with infrared lasers. It won't work all that well during the day -- you'll only get a very short range. You can use them for point to point communication. This currently implies fairly sizable motes, however.

        Also the more of them you sprinkle the less power they need to use because they are a mesh network, they only have to talk to their neighbors. I would assume that motes would always be operating in least-power modes anyway, so they will be using as little power as possible when sending signals. I suspect it will be less trivial to pick this up than you think. Using MEMS technology today and nanotechnology tomorrow (but tomorrow never seems to come) you will be easily able to construct positionable directional antennae enough to where motes could reasonably do point to point communication and be near impossible to detect without being within their area of effect.

    • And then we'd know where they were. :)

      Maybe this is all a big DARPA trick to get the "enemy" to give away their positions with EMPs...

    • No microwaves needed unfortunately (Score:4, Funny)

      by laetus ( 45131 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:43PM (#5182552)

      The enemy just needs to battle harden one of these [shoppingspreez.com] and clear the battlefield.

  • Part of The Mesh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hlovy ( 613473 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:05PM (#5182300) Homepage
    It's another step toward The Mesh, covered very well in a Small Times cover package [smalltimes.com] last year.
    • It's another step toward The Mesh, covered very well in a Small Times cover package [smalltimes.com] last year.

      Completely off topic, but I saw the following in the article:

      Mike Horton, Crossbow's president and CEO, said the company tested the technology with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in March 2001 at the Twentynine Palms Marine base in Southern California.
      I remember an old Robert Plant song called "29 Palms" [absolutelyric.com] . Reading through the lyrics it's mostly just a love/lust song, no military significance but it was kinda cool to see a parallel, even if there's no actual link.
    • This is absolutely cool.
      The big value I see in this is in networking, and communications. Cell phone towers, tv stations, and internet backbones could in theory be replaced by spreading smart-dust arround town. The dust would automatically route from particle to particle to the correct phone, tv station, radio station, or internet IP address according to how you accessed it, and even automatically figure out the correct protocool. You wouldn't even be required to subscribe to an ISP or an pnone service provider, the dust would just route independently. if you needed more bandwidth in your connectivity, simply buy a bucket or two of smart dust and spread it arround, perhaps walk along the road and spread it arround like seed, or put it in a medium sized area and 50billion smart dusts will act and behave like a single transmitter.

      other cool application I could see are painting your sterio on the wall. the smart dust in the paint would automatically configure itself to resonate and listen to your voice to tell it what radio station to listen to, it would tune to the station and then vibrate sounds accordingly in perfict coordination. the same logic could be used for painting a tv screen on the wall, where smart dust could be configured to emit coordinated frequencies of light rather than sound.
  • If smart dust and dust bunnies under the furniture get together, there'd be no end to the mess they produce, and produce, and produce...
  • So I guess the Magic Server Pixiedust is a reality - guess IBM will be loosing out!

  • Noooo... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:07PM (#5182314)
    Migod... It can't be. A post that isn't a repeat!

    Quick! Archive it for posterity!

    Twice.

  • But could we... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ogrez ( 546269 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:07PM (#5182319)
    Shape the motes like spiders... and give them simple commands like "kill Tom Selleck"

    • Re:But could we... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Maeryk ( 87865 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:17PM (#5182385) Journal
      Shape the motes like spiders... and give them simple commands like "kill Tom Selleck"

      AUGHHH! Thanks! Thanks SO MUCH! My therapist thanks you as well! I had FINALLY blocked Gene Simmons' acting career from my head.. but when I read that, for some reason I got his character from that and the one from "Never too young to die" crossed, and Now im seeing the Hard Rock Divine going after Tom with robotic spiders in fishnets!

      AUGHHH!

  • I can see it now. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Some Bitch ( 645438 )
    In Soviet Russia, the sensor net watches Y...ah...that didn't really work did it? On a somewhat more serious note, how hard are these things to fool? Electronic gadgetry is notorious for it's ability to get things wrong, how is this one (I assume it is somehow) different?
    • In my research group at a University highly involved with this project, these motes can currently recognize that there is a moving object. They can figure out that it is an object, and can track it. That's about it.

      Fooling the sensors into believing that something is moving isn't very difficult. They're light-sensitive so a cloud in front of the sun might trigger it. However, these are somewhat minor problems that will be solved shortly.

      The biggest problem is an enemy attempting to confuse the network. However, the network has many safeguards built in with the intention of preventing, detecting, and avoiding any such attacks.

  • That's kinda frightening (Score:5, Interesting)

    by terrencefw ( 605681 ) <slashdot@jameshol[ ].net ['den' in gap]> on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:13PM (#5182362) Homepage
    The surveillance power of this kind of thing is pretty damn scary, assuming they perfect it. Of course, it's got defense applications, so of course they're going to develope it.

    If we had this tehcnology now, we could sprinkle a load over Iraq to detect chemical weapons residues and radiation above background levels.

    • Re:That's kinda frightening (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      At least Smart Dust's developer, Kris Pister, is thinking of all of this. In a Small Times article from August 2001 [smalltimes.com] he states: "We're pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. There's profit to be made and advantage to be had. Let's get people aware of it so we do it right. Well, we'll never do it completely right, but we don't want to do it horribly, horribly wrong."
    • It could be misused but think of how it might have been used in a situation like Operation Anaconda. It could have been sprinkled along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
      • Actually the US has already tried something similar. In the Vietnam war they dropped thousands of sensors along the Ho Chi Minh trail that were supposed to detect enemy troop and supply movements. The program was not particularly successful - partly because the sensors were not very good at distinguishing between humans and animals, and partly because of the delays involved in getting fire laid down where it was supposed to be.

        If you are interested in following this up, the operation was called "Igloo White".

  • Roomba it away (Score:3, Funny)

    by flashbang ( 124262 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:13PM (#5182365)
    Would my Roomba become smarter after cleaning up the dust? Talk about reuse...
    • No, it would explode. I would expect the motes to detect when they have been cut off from the outside world and collected in one place; they will then disperse some kind of explosive when there are enough of them, and blow up the collection device.

      It would at least making cleaning it up more dangerous and expensive, if not stop it altogether. You could incorporate it into their design such that they use the stuff for shock mounting or something.

  • Clean Room parade? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:15PM (#5182380) Homepage Journal
    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...

    • Re:Clean Room parade? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:23PM (#5182427)
      One possible solution to protect against smart dust would to create military buildings with a high internal atmospheric pressure

      This is already common practice. In most office buildings, the HVAC system is employed to maintain a slight overpressure. This has the benefit of making it less likely for foreign substances, including airborne chemical and biological agents, to enter the building from the outside. That's just a side-effect, though. The designed-in purpose is much more mundane. It's to keep ordinary dust-- the dumb kind-- out, to keep the buildings clean.
    • The CDC and similar facilities have the reverse of this - they keep the "really nasty disease" labs at a lower atmospheric pressure so that if any germs get loose or an airlock seal fails no germs will not be able to float out.

      Tim

  • A Deepness in the Sky? (Score:5, Informative)

    by McSpew ( 316871 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:16PM (#5182381)

    Anybody who's read Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky [amazon.com] is already familiar with the concept of sensor-equipped smart dust that has lots of uses. That was a great book, by the way.

    • You may remember that networks of small sensors figured prominently in The Peace War, also by Vernor Vinge.

      Hmm, I sense a pattern here.
    • I had to search on "Deepness" to see if this triggered anybody else. Glad to see I'm not the only one.
    • I was just re-reading this great book today... below is a paragraph where one of the book's heros is interviewed by Thomas Nau, the book's primary villain. Vinh calls his "smart dust" Localizers.
      Thomas let the Peddler Rattle on. He listened, nodded, asked the reasonable questions... and watched the analysis that spread across his huds.
      Lordy. The localizers in the air, on Vinh's chair, even on his skin, reported to the Invisble Hand, where programs analyzed and sent the results back to Nau's huds, painting Vinh's skin with colors that showed galvanic response, skin temperature, perspiration. Standard graphics around the face showed pulse and other internals. An inset window showed what Vinh was seeing from his place across the desk, and mapped his every eye movement with red tracks. Two of Brugel's snoops were allocated to this interview, and their analysis was a flowing legend across the top of Nau's vision. Subject is relaxed to tenth percentile of the normal interview level. Subject is confident but wary, without sympath for the Podmaster. Subject is not currently trying to supress expicit thought.
      From page 476 of the paperback edition.
    • Y'know, I'm currently reading that book and it was the first thing that came to mind when I read the headline. ..so we need to embed a secret backdoor command structure into these things, no?
  • Anti Dust [billybear4kids.com]

    Is this it?
  • wasn't this in "The Diamond Age" by Stephenson?
    • Nope, "A Deepness in the sky" by Vernor Vinge had a sensor net of free-floating chips used for surveillance.

      In diamond age they had mites, microscopic robots that would decay into "toner", a dust-like pollutant. They had surveillance mites, but they were active robots, not passive sensors.
  • Sounds like the plot of a book I read recently. What was it again? Oh yes, Michael Crichton's PREY. I'm just waiting for the smart dust to start munching on us.
  • is running for independence .. I don't know how 'smart' that is, however...

  • w00t (Score:4, Funny)

    by pummer ( 637413 ) <spam&pumm,org> on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:27PM (#5182453) Homepage Journal
    SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now'
    Sooner than Duke Nukem?
  • I guess they're frantically looking for the prototype now ?
  • Is this like IBM Pixie Dust? Mmmm... soy based...
  • So exactly what are the effects of a stiff wind on smart dust? It seems to me that even a moderate wind would wreak havoc on the survellaince attempts of dust, or am I missing something?
    • So exactly what are the effects of a stiff wind on smart dust? It seems to me that even a moderate wind would wreak havoc on the survellaince attempts of dust, or am I missing something?

      Perhaps the motes could deploy little claws, to anchor themselves onto the first thing they bump into (a blade of grass, a tree, the seat of the enemy general's pants, etc.)

    • It's not so much that you're missing something, as it is that you've turned the problem around. :-)

      Wind and distribution will be good. Movement will be good. Accurate location information isn't that far off, and then you'll want things to move around so as to better map out an area. For example, when something like this is deployed in water to provide ground truth for some airborne sensor, you count on drift and movement to spread over the target area.

      • That makes a little bit more sense now. I kept seeing a whole bunch of motes all blown into a little pile at a base of some rock. But I can see how wind would actually help you distribute the sensors into an area.

        Thanks!

  • George W Bush Jr Jr: It might just be paranoia, but I think that line of coke is looking at me funny.

  • Health impacts? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Masked Fruitcake ( 630078 ) <matt.starvale@net> on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:44PM (#5182557) Journal
    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? :)
    • how do they get cleaned up?

      New business opportunity. Detection and removal of Smart Dust.

      Ain't capitalism great? ;-)

    • Re:Health impacts? (Score:3, Informative)

      by docbrown42 ( 535974 )
      What, will I have to install an "EMP chamber" like an airlock in my home to walk through?

      Nah, nudism is your friend. Then, all you need to install is a water-filled tunnel into your home (to wash off any dust).

      • Nudism doesn't suffice. It gets in your ears, it gets in your hair, it gets down your throat... you can't wash it away.

        EMP would work for awhile (until they switch to optical circuits). But not if you ever take work home.


    • how do they get cleaned up?

      anti smart dust smart dust.

  • Do a google search for (Score:3, Informative)

    by revision1_1 ( 69575 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:45PM (#5182570) Homepage
    NOWHERE TO HIDE technology. There are a bunch of presentations archived in various and sundry places that talk about this sort of thing, as well as the other elements used.
  • I seem to be having flashbacks of Michael Crichton's book Prey [amazon.com] I don't see the real deal here coming any where close to the "dust" in the book, but maybe someone can start up a few rumors.

  • Even if the technology doesn't work... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chocolate Teapot ( 639869 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:50PM (#5182633) Homepage Journal
    ...it would at the very least decimate the enemy by incapacitating asthmatic troops.

  • How long to they live? What about batteries? (Score:3, Funny)

    by specialized_sworks ( 84449 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @01:55PM (#5182693)
    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
    • RFID transmits on the power recieved from the radio signal that activates it.

      Some guy was working on designing a radio that would be powered by the radio waves it received (as a challange to himself) and ended up making a mine detector that was powered by the swinging back-and-forth motion of the person using it to detect mines. (if anyone can find a link, i'd appreciate it)

      Something this small isn't going to need much power.
    • The traditional answer is that they'll use sound vibration as a power source or possibly vibrations from the natural Brownian motion of the other nanoscale moleclues and dust motes bouncing around alongside them. A power source is definitely one of the major open questions that threatens the concept of free-roaming nanotech (for better or for worse).
  • Has anyone read the new book Prey by Michael Crichton? This post was a bit of a shock to me... not that we are anywhere close to where he goes in the book, but much closer than I thought we were. Does anyone see a problem with making something the human eye can't see (easily) and then trying to put our best AI into it? One bee is just a Nuisance. Thousands of them working together are deadly!

  • ides that come to mind (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We could now DDOS people with allergies. Jerry Seinfeld will have one more reason to be afraid of dirt. "It's WATCHING ME!!!". What happens if you ingested smart dust? Would they keep getting readings back through the whole process?

  • Sample civilan app (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ^ ( 104273 )
    Great Duck Island [greatduckisland.net]

    We're from Berkeley, man. While sensor networks can be used for killing people better, that's not what motivates me in this research.

  • Complete loss of privacy and safety? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by digital photo ( 635872 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @03:03PM (#5183362) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • A world without privacy. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by praksys ( 246544 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2003 @03:25PM (#5183522)
    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.

    • You know what?
      Someone is watching. Someone is recording. His name is God.

      I'm hardly a religious freak, but I think the world, especially the West, would be a much better place if people just took religion more seriously. If they took God more seriously.

      Think about it. He's there, watching everything. We will all be held accountable for everything we've done.

      It doesn't even matter what religion you believe in. As far as I know, all of the major religions have this as a basic tenet. It's part of being God. He get's to see everything, to know everything.

      If people actually believed that there was an ultimate consequence to everything they did, this would be a better place.

      • Someone is watching. Someone is recording. His name is God.

        I thought seriously about discussing this idea in my original post. A number of ethical theorists like Bentham and Locke thought that the idea of constant observation by God was a key part of moral consciousness. Religious people who take this idea seriously are always in a position of having to think about what their behavior would look like from God's perspective. Bentham actually proposed that prisons should be built, so that the inmates were literally under constant observation, in the hope that they would get into this habbit of thinking (his plan which he called the "panopticon" has actually be implemented in some places).

        I am an athiest, but like Machiavelli I am willing to consider the possibility that religion might serve a useful social function even though it is strictly fiction. Still it seems to me that there are serious problems with the idea of grounding morality in religion. For one thing it is getting increasingly harder to maintain the fiction. For another thing, people who think that God is the source of all value are prone to forget that it is really individual human lives that matter. When that happens they tend to do horrible things even though they think God is watching.

        Wouldn't it be better if we could really make it true that we will be held accountable for every action, and that it is our fellow hummans who will do the accounting?
        • Wouldn't it be better if we could really make it true that we will be held accountable for every action, and that it is our fellow hummans who will do the accounting?

          Yes.

          Genesis 20:13 - If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

          Genesis 38:9 - And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. 38:10 - And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.

          Spydust can stop homosexuals and masturbators, hurrah! Omnipresence RULES! Also, every law should be enforced all the time, because it's lawbreakers who do bad things (never lawmakers.)

    • Unfortunately, totalitarianism doesn't need to get established in secret. It gets established because 50% of the US believe that they are soon going to be in the upper 10%.

      What may save us is information overload. We can't be sure of that, but do you really believe that someone spends all day reading email that carnivore has intercepted? How many people would it really take? But we can't be certain, because there might be some way to handle the overload. So what this might lead to is a very traditional culture along the lines of "the nail that protrudes shall be struck down". (I.e., small town morality.) (But I don't believe that scenario!)
      • What may save us is information overload. We can't be sure of that, but do you really believe that someone spends all day reading email that carnivore has intercepted? How many people would it really take? But we can't be certain, because there might be some way to handle the overload.

        I think there is already a way to handle information overload - or at least there are ways to handle it and those ways are going to improve faster than the volume of information. Credit card companies have already developed some very sophisticated, and effective, methods for detecting fraudulent transactions amongst the millions (or is it billions now?) of transactions that they process every day. Methods like this, for spoting unusual or suspect behavior are going to rapidly improve along with surveilence technology.

        Of course there is no way to watch everyone, but it is possible to watch everyone that is doing something interesting.
    • You want to read The Transparent Society [amazon.com], it's all about ubiquitious "eyes" and how it can be a good thing. I'm skeptical, I think people of wealth, power, and influence will always have means to keep their dealings secret and I have a great fear that privacy as we know it will be only for those who can afford it.
  • I wonder what the potential for hacking these networks is? If they're running on low power, low performance devices, are they going to have robust encryption?

    Even if you couldn't decrypt the signals, you could detect their presence.. which leads to a bunch of potential counter-measures: jam their communications with a bunch of RF noise, sweep a microwave beam to fry their circuits, the list goes on.

    Interestingly enough, fairly low tech countermeasures could be used to combat this kind of high technology.
  • Anyone who has read Prey by Michael Crichton is probably shuddering right about now.

    Basically, the idea in the book was that there were swarms of these very kinds of devices that could gain self-awareness and intelligence, and formed into 3-d copies of people. They were able to mimic the actions and sound of people undetectably.

    They also were able to self-replicate and other stuff, like kill people and what not. Hilarity ensued.

    Anyone who hasn't read Prey and finds this interesting may be in for a good read.

  • Sounds familiar doesn't it. Now I want my "Young Man's Illustrated Primer". I would rather dispense with the sex and name change so I can get the Young Woman's version.
  • Since Motes are so tiny -- usually with memory measured in mere hundreds or thousands of bytes...

    Boy have we come a long way. I remember when "thousands of bytes" was a TON of memory -- literally. ;)

  • I recently read the new Michael Crichton book called Prey. This company had built these very small machines that had a very small "camera" on it I guess you could say. They would take millions of these very small cameras, and be able to recieve video from them, but they looked like a swarm of bees or somethin.

    Pretty interesting book, i haven't been able to read the whole article yet but it sounds similar.

  • ..goes to war against Swaziland in 2084 in an attempt to prevent the proliferation of Weapons of nano sized destruction....
  • I say cover the world with them, have all of the internet and cell phones go through them in a P2P sort of system, make a totally distributed worldwide network useing tiny grains spread over the whole world. make them small as a few cells. let them become part of the evironment, let animals eat them and absorb them into their body, a hundred thousand years from now, when humans are gone animals will evolve to use the networks cells that live in the tissues of their bodys, they will grow up as telepaths, and when they reach the level of civilization they will wonder how their mysterious power came to be, and they will decide it must have evolved that way randomly and not care very much.

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