CIA Can Now Give You Orders through Your Teeth
- From: SnapCrackle <webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 01:23:58 -0700
RFID Related - 'World's smallest radio' unveiled
This article below is RFID related in that this is the until now
missing
part of the RFID technology.
Very small RFID chips were developed some time ago but the way of
connecting them to other devices was still bound by more traditional
radio technologies with larger antenna and packaging. According to
this
article below it is now feasible to go 1,000 times smaller.
This sort of development advances the suite of technologies needed to
make ubiquitous (or pervasive) sensing and computing, cheap and
nanoscopic with very low power consumption. I am sure that there will
be optical techniques for doing this as well.
In future it will be possible to tag every item at very low cost (at
the
moment it still costs a few cents per item). In security or
surveillance
people will be dusted rather than photographed and then detected and
tracked by active or passive scanners (linked to networks) that will
be
cheap and virtually undetectable. It would be possible to dust the
whole planet with sensors and data relays attached to these things
and
create a global "panoptican" and data/communications web.
One of the advantages of this technology is that the power
consumption
of any "active" RFID chip and antenna (active = powered as oppose to
unpowered or "passive") will be orders of magnitude lower than the
existing systems. This means it could virtually power itself or
recharge a nano battery from local ambient energy sources.
As usual science/research and security/military will have these first
and commerce and communications a few years later.
BBC NEWS = Oct 18, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7050477.stm
'World's smallest radio' unveiled
The world's tiniest radio is a step closer to reality.
US scientists have unveiled a detector thousands of times smaller
than
the diameter of a human hair that can translate radio waves into
sound.
According to a University of California team, the study marks the
first
time that a nano-sized detector has been demonstrated in a working
radio system.
Made of carbon nanotubes a few atoms across, it is almost 1,000 times
smaller than current radio technology.
Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen incorporated the microscopic
detector
into a complete radio system.
They used it to transmit classical music wirelessly from an iPod to a
speaker several metres away from the music player.
Full details of their findings will be published next month in the
American Chemical Society's Nano Letters.
"Though we have only demonstrated the critical component of the
entire
radio system out of a nanotube (the demodulator), it is conceivable
in
the future that all components could be nanoscale, thus allowing a
truly nanoscale wireless communications system," they write.
Smart dust
Many companies are interested in the long-term potential of carbon
nanotubes -- tiny cylinders of carbon that measure just a few
billionths
of a metre across.
Kris Sangani, Consumer Electronics Editor at the Institution of
Engineering and Technology, UK, one of the world's leading
professional
societies, said there were many possible real world applications of
"microscopic radio technology"- in medicine, commerce and on the
battlefield.
He said the real challenge for industry was to miniaturise not just
radio technology but other components such as sensors, the power
supply
and processors.
"Scientists are looking at carbon nanotubes to miniaturise all other
technologies as well," he told BBC News. "If you can combine
miniaturisation with cost control; that type of technology would be
ubiquitous."
Such a development would bring the concept of smart dust - a cluster
of
devices, smaller than a grain of sand, equipped with wireless
communications that can detect the likes of light, temperature, or
vibration - into the realms of reality rather than science fiction.
Future uses might include meteorological, geophysical and biological
research sensors. They could also be used for discrete military
surveillance, or to create a distributed internet that would be
accessible anywhere.
.
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