Sensor Rise Powers Life Recorders
Hewlett-Packard’s Trusted Systems Lab director Martin Sadler predicts that by 2057 there could be at least 1 million devices for every resident in the United Kingdom, and that a person’s entire life could be recorded on a network of intelligent sensors. However, Sadler warns that such massive amounts of collectable personal data could lead to some difficult ethical dilemmas. There already are an abundance of sensors and recording devices in our everyday world, Sadler notes, including closed-circuit TVs, wildlife monitoring devices, mobile phone cameras, and GPS devices. A 2002 study calculated that there were about 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom, or about one camera for every 14 people. Researchers at Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and MIT have already developed devices that record a person’s every move. Sadler says most of the applications will be “innocent and harmless.” He says, “We imagine by 2057 our motorways, rivers and costal defenses, farms, businesses, homes and neighborhoods and bodies will all be highly instrumented.” Sadler’s predictions are echoed by Oliver Sparrow, a scenario planner who has advised the U.K. government and international organizations. Sparrow says advances in technology and a better understanding of physics would lead to a new breed of devices that are too small to see and capable of permeating the space around us and even our bodies to record everything. Sadler and Sparrow both believe that there needs to be more public debate about such sensor technologies and how they are used.
BBC News (08/29/07) Seward, Liz
