Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Smart Dust - A Reality

You've probably heard of Smart Dust before, but most likely not coming from CNN.
Palo Alto, California (CNN) -- In the 1990s, a researcher named Kris Pister dreamed up a wild future in which people would sprinkle the Earth with countless tiny sensors, no larger than grains of rice.

These "smart dust" particles, as he called them, would monitor everything, acting like electronic nerve endings for the planet. Fitted with computing power, sensing equipment, wireless radios and long battery life, the smart dust would make observations and relay mountains of real-time data about people, cities and the natural environment.

Now, a version of Pister's smart dust fantasy is starting to become reality.

read the complete article

6 comments:

  1. Curt, I had never heard about smart dust before today. Jesus, it really will be a prison planet !

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  2. Yes Curt and they are small enough to be injected or inhaled.

    "Smart dust researchers say their theory of monitoring the world -- however it's realized -- will benefit people and the environment."

    Oh yeah! I'm sure it will. This is right up Ted Turners alley. CNN is such a piece of work.

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  3. "People ask me what my job is, and I say, well, I'm going to save the world," he said.

    And God save us from those that would profess to save the world.

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  4. you summed it up neatly Laughnmatter. we sure have some sick people in the world.

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  5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5VZUIpoLBg

    Many such vidclips on the tube. Google smart dust and get lost in the results. It's overwhelming. One article went into the power supply issue. Multiple companies are battling to deliver the best solution. One Co. says it will soon be able to supply their version of smart dust with a long life battery for one single US $ per unit. And I thought this stuff was fiction!

    The Peugeot commercials explain why CNN would print that article. It's an announcement. "Hey, you're fucked, so give up!"

    Yip, this sucks.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHBWN80G0r8

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQMj-v5f4m0

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  6. Well, I remember watching dust particles turning and reflecting like little beacons in sunlight through a loft skylight in 1961 or '2. I don't think human technology was then advanced enough for this kind of scheme, though I used the simple fact
    of what I had seen in what I was then writing.

    The normal house-dust under your beds is mite-dung and that will not reflect, produced from their eating your skin particles, which keratin likewise will not reflect.

    But hair particles will reflect, as will degraded sand and other crystal minerals.

    I would recommend that you don't shy at every shadow. Sure some shadows will have some substance that we should eliminate, but not all.

    In fact I say concentrate on those that do, and on the act of taking down 'big brother' and disempowering the rest of his vermin accomplices while you still can, and I still say this can be done without bloody revolution.

    But I have told you 'how' too often to have to repeat it.

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