In the last few years, some delightful technologies have become available to consumers, driving a new boom in electronics sales. These technologies include touch-screen, wireless Internet, accelerometers and global positioning systems to mention the key ones. I happen to be writing this blog entry on a device that has all of these and more.
But what is next? Have we reached some sort of technological pinnacle now? I think not.
I’m eagerly awaiting one big technology to arrive soon. Proximity sensing.
I’m slightly myopic, but most people don’t realize this. They never see me with glasses on. The mundane reason is that I have an amazing propensity to lose glasses. Most glasses I have ever had take their leave from me after a few months, with the last set disappearing forever on a plane back from the US. What I would love is a device that monitors their position and alerts me if they are no longer in my immediate viscinity.
I can conceive of other applications immediately. Finding golf-balls when they get lost in the rough. Keeping tags on errant toddlers or pets. Finding the car in the car park. Maybe even finding partners to all the odd socks in the house..
The key to such a technology is a thingy known as a RFID tag. It’s a small transmitter that can be attached to any object, so that its location can be determined by an appropriate detection device.
RFID’s are still somewhat expensive, which explains why we don’t see them in the shops just yet. They are already being used in certain specialist industries and their size and cost is reducing yearly. I can concieve a time, however, when rolls of tiny, machine washable or transparent RFIDs will be bought in shops for just a few pence each, or that they will already be embedded in most items bought in the shops.
The detection devices are also relatively straightforward, using simple triangulation to pinpoint objects. Indeed a small pocket device such as a mobile phone should be more than adequate to find missing things quicky.
Add in some some software to determine specific rules, associate items to the tags and enable specific applications and those missing socks will be a thing of the past.
Sunny spells and scattered showers 
4 comments
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January 2, 2009 at 1:47 pm
dragonqueen
Umm… scary at the same time.
I can relate to “where are my keys/glasses/drywall hooks etc.” I’m absent minded enough to be over qualified for a professor’s chair – at least according to the hatchlings- and I spent a good deal of time searching for just drywall hooks before logging in.
But still all technology that can track me, my stuff, what I do and what I don’t is scaring. I’m well aware of that I’m one way or another are subjected to surveillance already. Just don’t give Big Brother more toys to annoy us with.
January 4, 2009 at 8:47 am
Colm
Hi dragonqueen, I know where you are coming from. Mind you, all of these technologies are already available, pretty much. I’m just suggesting a potentially big consumer application for them.
Your point is well made though. Big Brother will proceed with developing his own technologies irrespective of what apps become available to consumers. One of the major uses of RFIDs is in passports. Most passports already have them. This was news to me!
The whole issue of privacy and what governments are entitled to know about their citizens is a huge area for the legal eagles to pore over for decades to come. A determined government already has plenty of tools in it’s arsenal to track and monitor people. All we can do is hope that our governments don’t turn bad, and start to use this power for their own nefarious ends.
January 5, 2009 at 1:01 am
trucie
yep, I need a proximity device: the headphones to my iPhone have gone walkabout…
January 6, 2009 at 9:34 am
Colm
Yeah – I so understand this – having lost an expensive mountaineering jacket and a nice set of Sennheiser headphones in the last year or so, this technology couldn’t arrive too quickly..