The science-fiction dream of "smart dust" is still a ways off, but moving closer to reality, reports Steve Lohr in the New York Times (1/31/10). Hewlett-Packard has embarked on a ten-year mission "to embed up to a trillion pushpin-size sensors around the globe (link)." The dream is to connect "the physical world to computing as never before," using so-called "smart dust" sensors to enable "buildings that manage their own energy use, bridges that sense motion and metal fatigue, cars that track traffic patterns and report potholes, and fruit and vegetable shipments that tell grocers when they ripen and begin to spoil."

The hangup is that the sensors need batteries: "Instead of dust ... the sensors would be the size of grapefruits." But the battery barrier is coming down, which is expanding "the potential data workloads that sensors can handle and the distance over which they can communicate -- without batteries." The key is that "the more sensors there are, the better the data quality should be. When mined and analyzed, better data should in turn help people make smarter decisions about things as diverse as energy policy and product marketing."

If this happens, some envision the result to be something like "an internet for things," giving rise to "fresh demand for a wide range of hardware and software to store, process and search the new data for nuggets of useful information." Others, such as computer scientist Deborah Estrin, says that future is already here -- in the form of the cellphone, which are in fact "versatile data collectors" that can monitor a person's daily life (link). Deborah thinks the killer app "is personalized health and wellness," saying, "The potential to help people make behavior changes and lead healthier lives is tremendous."