Sensing....

I like the idea of sensors. It's the implications that kill me.

The idea is awesome. Something that can tell where there's traffic congestion based on the density of cell phone calls from a given area? Brilliant. Measuring blood flow - and, by implication, clots - is an obvious extension to the concept. (Just got to get those blood cells to use cell phones!) Evaluating the purity of water by measuring how long it takes light to pass through it? Man, you can MEASURE something that's going that fast? Real-time measurement of brake overheating and tread wear coming up! So I like the idea. And when I think about the 'smart dust' battlefield concept, I get tingles.

The implications amplify those tingles and turn them into a shiver down my spine. Measuring cell phone call density makes me think of Carnivore, the NSA program to listen to millions of phone calls simultaneously, flagging those with key phrases. (I hear they've figured out that if they get Omar, we have set the bomb to go off here at six oh two PM, it's likely not a worthwhile intercept. Or is it?) Real time measurements make me think of facial recognition software that can locate and track a person automatically, and remember it forever. Which is good when its whom I'd agree is a bad person, but pretty awful when its me. And the idea of 'smart dust', aka sensors everywhere implies that we could -- some say, already do -- experience the inability to get away from the All Seeing Eye. Which is okay if its people I trust doing it, but not at all when its people directed by, say, the likes of Dick Cheney.

I like the idea, though. I just doubt we're smart enough and moral enough for the reality.