This is, alas, how humanity progresses.
“Arredondo lost his hand following an IED explosion in Iraq and is now able to use the the i-Limb which has finger ‘joints’ that act like natural fingers.”
http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/3700/Wounded_US_Iraq_Vet_First_with_Bionic_Hand
Our dreams right now.
“Gaia’s Dreams is an experiment based on Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious. It is designed to gather and analyze collective dream quality and content, and to provide reports on emerging trends based on aspects of those dreams.”
http://www.psiarcade.com/gaia/
This one needs government approval, but is the kind of high volume market that would further drive the deployment of an environment you can sense.
“RFID Limited is currently marketing its chipped luggage tags to airline industries as a means of reducing human error and decreasing the amount of luggage lost in transit. Additionally, the company is adding a dash of glitz and glamor to its BagChipElite lineup, which will reportedly be designed to match luggage crafted by the likes of “Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Prada, and Louis Vuitton.”
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/23/rfid-limited-unveils-designer-bagchip-luggage-tags-for-the-elite/
http://www.packagedrfid.com/
The money app is gaming, but check out the personal infrastructure angle.
“Ritter also described how he added a cool P5 data glove that can be used to control a mouse pointer on a PC. The glove had to be customized to work with the Sun SPOT: Ritter added two perpendicular gyroscopes, and then the Sun SPOT was attached to the back of the glove using velcro. In Ritter’s experience, a refresh rate of 1/25 sec is optimal for smooth mouse movement. However he also confirmed that the data glove is not yet a viable replacement for a mouse since it needs to be calibrated for each user.”
http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/2007/articles/robotics.jsp
SunSpot is Sun Microsystems’ technology program for small, wireless sensors for many applications. Here’s a recent example from their web site documenting different applications of the technology – think about this as how easy to actually build something that can tell you more about the world around you.
“So starting Friday morning, we built a rocket, embedded 2 Sun SPOTs in “Space Shuttle” vehicles, wrote the ground-telemetry software (in Java), developed some Sun SPOT antenna extenders and documented the whole thing from start to finish. The result? We launched two (redundant) Sun SPOTs on a single rocket that streamed light, temperature and acceleration data live over the radio to the ground stations that were busy plotting the data.”
http://blogs.sun.com/davidgs/entry/the_birth_of_the_sun
Universal power supply.
“Do I need direct sunlight to charge up with my Solar Style Charger?
No. The solar panels convert any light into electricity. The amount of time it takes to fully charge your device will be affected by the brightness of the light source but you do not need a clear sunny day to use your Solar Style Charger.”
http://solarstyle.com/
Smaller, more mobile, sensors and cameras, driven by fear but what the heck. You can also get a stun gun here…
“The only FCC approved 2.4 Ghz Portable Color Wirewless Pinhole Camera in the market.”
http://store.espymall.com/
Night vision, binocular-cameras, two-way radio watches; capabilities for awareness of the world around us, rapidly migrating into affordable consumer products.
“Famous Trails is dedicated to providing the finest in Perception Enhancement Solutions”
http://www.famoustrails.com/home.html
Here’s news from wi-fi infrastructure developers that are expanding spectrum available for such broad coverage of connectivity.
“Using Tropos’ recently-announced SABRE technology, operators can use policy-based routing to dynamically route traffic through unlicensed Wi-Fi, 4.9 GHz, licensed WiMAX or other links based on application, service, priority or other configurable rules.”
http://www.tropos.com/news/pressreleases/2007_03_27a.php
Always on, always connected, requires always electricity.
“Realizing their recent theoretical prediction, they were able to light a 60W light bulb from a power source seven feet (more than two meters) away; there was no physical connection between the source and the appliance. The MIT team refers to its concept as “WiTricity” (as in wireless electricity). The work will be reported in the June 7 issue of Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science.”
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/wireless-0607.html