Personal Infrastructure

I wrote in my book Neurosphere that the war on terror was essentially a war on ourselves. The more we inter-mesh through RFID and other technologies, the more we need to proactively decide whether to war on ourselves or not.

“A typical passive RFID chip costs about a quarter, whereas one with encryption capabilities runs about $5. It’s just not cost-effective for your average office building to invest in secure chips. This leaves most RFIDs vulnerable to cloning or – if the chip has a writable memory area, as many do – data tampering. Chips that track product shipments or expensive equipment, for example, often contain pricing and item information.”

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/rfid.html

Real time location services. Tracking your stuff, tracking your loved ones, well, don’t you want to know?

“The company’s Hugs and Halo systems are designed to help prevent infants from being removed from a hospital without permission, while RoamAlert is intended to keep patients—such as those with Alzheimer’s—from wandering unattended. The infant and patient-monitoring systems offer other protections as well, such as skin-sensing capabilities that can trigger an alert when a tag is removed from a wearer.”

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3565/1/1/

Treating the electric with the electric. The boundary between the brain and the environment seems to be permeable.

“A device that specifically targets rapidly growing cancer cells with intermediate frequency electrical fields — called Tumor-Treating Fields (TTFields) — doubled the survival rates of patients with brain cancer, according to a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal article.”

http://pressesc.com/01180456249_brain_cancer_electric_field

I’m pretty sure Philip K. Dick already wrote this.

“Tel Aviv University scientists have shown that it is possible to store rudimentary memories in an artificial culture of live neurons.”

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1183459218199&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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

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

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

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