Notes from "Roboflies, Flexonics, and the Social Life of Smart Dust"

By Cory Doctorow at 2:04 pm Friday, Apr 25

Here are my running notes from "Roboflies, Flexonics, and the Social Life of Smart Dust," David Pescovitz and Eric Paulos at ETCON.

Cross-disciplinary research is finally enabling ubicomp.

Danny Hillis story: at compsci conference in the early 70s, someone predicted that the market for PCs would be in the millions, and other laughed -- will we have computers in every doorknob? Well, this hotel does.

Start with the UPC barcode. Last major innovention in shopping in meatspace. Future is endangered by new, smaller, smarter barcodes. Shelves, packaging and carts will all coordinate to reorder, bill, recommend, track condition.

The keyis RFIDs -- passive silicon that stores a GUID, hit it with RF and it emits the number. Already used for security -- badges for crossing doorways; for logistics -- shipping palettes that know where/who they are. Benneton's ditched RFID plans over the potential invasion of privacy.

For RFIDs to kill UPCs, they need to be dirt cheap: 0.5 cents.

Semiconducting nanoparticle inks can be printed with inkjets onto cloth, paper, etc. Based on liquid gold nanocrystals. 20 atoms across, melt at 100 deg C, 10% of normal melting temp. Encapsulated in a shell, dissolved in regular ink. Inkjet printer lays down circuits using this stuff or can be screened on using traditional packaging processes. The printing burns off the capsule.

Have printed transistors, will print diodes. Crude today, but good/cheap enough for RFIDs: balance tech and economics.

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