This looks like spyware tech. In particular, for micro-scale active-RFID tags. The basic idea is to take an RFID tag, attach a small battery, and to that, attach a tiny solar pv chip and microcontroller to keep the battery charged indefinitely. In contrast to passive RFID, which has only a few cm range IIRC, the active RFID tag can be read hundreds of meters away. There are some non-dystopian applications, i.e. it makes tracking expensive inventory much easier.
Add a tiny microphone and some memory, and you have hard-to-detect surveillance spyware that can basically be placed anywhere. The STASI would have loved it, of course.
Looks like these active RFID applications are getting rather common, for example, this DoD supplier:
> There are some non-dystopian applications, i.e. it makes tracking expensive inventory much easier.
Doesn't even have to be expensive. Cold-chain comes to mind. Pair with the most barebones thermosensor and with a quick/broad sweep you can ID localized cold chain issues. (e.g IoT sensor on a shipping crate may indicate <0*C but localized pockets of heat start registering on individual packages, etc.)
You are not all that far off in some respects - take a look at the link on their page called - "What is smart dust and how is it used?" https://www.nanowerk.com/smartdust.php
Oh yeah, grey goo. We completely forgot about this other apocalyptic scenario.
Snarky joke and micro contamination concerns aside, this tech is really exciting. The implications for health alone are immense, imagine nano bots circulating in your body and repairing stuff along the way.
It has 80s sci fi vibe all over it, optimistic and pessimistic takes alike.
Yeah, I really wish I could get excited about this but you just know this is going to be another ecological disaster and/or privacy scandal waiting too happen.
Something I'm much more hopeful about is the possibility of growing organs in laboratories, which will have massive implications for health aswell as industrial production of food.
Though, putting aside pessism I can see these technologies being synergistic, potentially benefitting all of humanity. One can dream
> you just know this is going to be another ecological disaster and/or privacy scandal waiting too happen.
Agreed. Yet the preventive solution seems obvious: we need to set aside our differences and work together bending the economies of the super powers towards the miraculous development of smaller rice.
Your line of thinking doesn't make sense to me. Lab grown organs are going to lead to ecological disasters and privacy scandals if only because they'll save the life of the next privacy Hitler who will go on to use micro batteries in hideous ways.
Every technology leads to problems because we as humans who use the technology are flawed.
If you follow that line of reasoning then you should just abolish medicine overall. I don’t think anyone reasonable would agree that’s worth the trade off.
> but we have no way of known which ones will be problematic
Before we build something, we usually have a pretty good idea of what problems it may cause. We can only have no idea if we don't know any property of it, and creating something that you didn't predict in any way is extremely rare.
For example, smart dust is one thing guaranteed to create both great ecological problems and solutions.
then all it takes one bug in code written by outsourced, tired devs and suddenly you cant control your arm or your bowels. that would be fun, shifting blame
Cynically, I’m almost to the point where I could consider this outcome an acceptable risk if the benefits are large.
The status quo today is an onslaught of (seemingly) random genomic and environmental impacts causing huge problems in human bodies. Treatments for these mutations may result in a lack of control of your arms or bowels…and don’t include a rollback feature.
Now, in the super simplistic worldview of my comment it disregards all of the random mutations and illnesses we’d need to deal with in addition to the possibility of poorly written code being deployed to our hypothetical nano bot army…so it’s for sure not the only answer, and your point has definite merit.
This happens already without the code bugs, as you already know if you've done much elder care; nanomachines offer us the ability to fix it. The crucial question is whether we'll be allowed to.
I did recently play a good video game where this ended up being the premise (can’t say the name because it’ll spoil) so I wouldn’t say it’s completely forgotten.
Just, climate change, nuclear war and disease are more at the forefront due to current events.
I'm surprised, this is HN and while there are several people complaining about spyware and what happens when you eat them, not a single comment about power density, mAh capacity, max current, and the neat variety of less ominous applications these might enable.
That could be a problem in terms of little kids eating then. Lithium batteries that are found in many toys sometimes get out, the kid swallows it, and suffers irreversible liver damage.
I don't think that's a very realistic scenario. Kid toys are already designed to have little to no small parts so that no part of the toy can be swallowed. A company that would put micro batteries in toys aimed at kids that are at the age where they eat toy parts would be grossly negligent.
There’s a lot of stuff sold on places like Amazon that are massive threats to kids and are not under the normal regulatory eye. I can point to you various clothing for example that is targeted to kids but has choking hazards on them.
It’s quaint to think that everything is under review and in your child’s best interests but that’s just not the case.
I’m not sure if you’ve had kids but they crawl around and are so close to the ground that any little thing is interesting. And they live putting things in their mouths. Throw a grain of rice in a kids play area and within the day they’ll have found it and put it in their mouths.
Seems ver problematic to not even question why this is a good thing we need. The ecological and potential health risks of ingesting batteries seems quite problematic.
Add a tiny microphone and some memory, and you have hard-to-detect surveillance spyware that can basically be placed anywhere. The STASI would have loved it, of course.
Looks like these active RFID applications are getting rather common, for example, this DoD supplier:
https://hi-techrfid.com/