Are We Ready for "Smart Dust"?

The tiny sensors could be used to explore space, find oil, screen blood, and more. The technology seems promising, but could it have negative implications?

You’re probably familiar with the concepts of smart homes, smart cars, smart bombs, smart food, and smart drugs, but in all likelihood you have never heard the word “smart” applied to dust before. “Smart dust” is a term coined by Dr. Kris Pister, an electrical engineering professor from the University of California-Berkeley, in the 1990s. Pister speculated that advances in nanoscale engineering could lead to the development of tiny, particle-scale computing and sensing technologies for monitoring a host of environmental factors in real time. If thousands of these wireless smart-dust devices were deployed, the data could be collected and analysed to check the health of ecosystems, observe volcano activity, monitor the strain on bridges and other structures, observe traffic flow in cities, measure climatic conditions, and even assist in the search for new natural resources.

Now, the leap from concept to application has occurred. In 2002, Dr. Michael Sailor of the University of California-San Diego developed a powder made from silicon to detect chemicals in the environment. Though not as sophisticated as the computing-based example described above, this technology uses externally-applied laser beams to make objects glow when exposed to contaminants that chemically bond with the powder. This kind of smart dust could be sprayed onto the ground to detect things like pesticides in soil, introduced into drinking-water sources to scan for hazardous chemicals and bacteria, or used as rapid-detection technology for screening human blood.

Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard (HP) is developing a more sophisticated form of smart-dust technology. HP announced in 2009 that it is working on the first commercial application of the technology, and in partnership with Royal Dutch Shell it plans to use a host of matchbook-sized computers to acquire high-resolution seismic measurements for more targeted petroleum exploration. HP calls its technology the “Central Nervous System for the Earth,” or CeNSE, and asserts that these silicon-based “nerves” and “nodes” could be critical to the survival of the planet, since billions of tiny, cheap, and durable sensors could stream key data to servers. Others have suggested that smart dust could be packed into the nose cones of rockets and then released into the atmosphere of other planets to collect data. Unlike current technologies for working in hostile environments such as space, smart dust is inherently reliable; the failure of one sensor is far less problematic, since other sensors can come online.

Military applications of smart-dust technology are also being pursued aggressively, and the U.S. Department of Defense’s research and development arm, known as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), has invested in similar technologies and sensor networks over the past several decades. Similarly, advances in micro-rocket technology for deploying smart dust continue. Like tiny spies in the skies, these one-time-deployment silicon and ceramic rockets can weigh less than one gram and be used to position and distribute a new kind of wirelessly-enabled network. They are at the cusp of a new era of military technology that is being fueled by advances in nanoscale engineering, robotics, sensor technology, solar technology, wireless technology, and materials science.

Smart dust is the focus of Michael Crichton’s 2002 novel Prey, wherein a genetically engineered bacterium assembles nanoscale robots that form autonomous, solar-powered, evolving swarms that exhibit intelligent and predatory behaviour. Although this depiction of smart dust is extreme, it should persuade us to ask some difficult questions about possible negative implications of this technology. Clearly, the technology seems promising, but as with all technologies there exists a dark side that must be understood and managed.

Since smart dust represents a new and enhanced mode of operation for the surveillance society, and since it also involves a dramatic shift toward ubiquitous computing, there exists a real possibility for the misuse of this technology by criminals and others who have an interest in collecting personal or corporate data surreptitiously. Even legitimate users of this technology will need to contend with the possibility that sensor networks can be hacked, and scientists are now conducting research on how to make these nodes and sensors tamper-proof through developments in public key cryptography for authentication purposes. But are these technological fixes enough?

In 2002, I published my concept of the “nano-panopticon” to expose how advances in nanotechnology are related to the development of surveillance and monitoring technologies. By miniaturizing camera technology and facilitating the development of active and passive sensors, nanotechnology is beginning to have profound effects on society and individuals. The nano-panopticon thesis is based on the earlier work of Michel Foucault and his analysis of English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham and the panopticon. The panopticon is a type of prison designed by Bentham in late-18th-century France. It allows guards to conduct pervasive observations of prisoners without being detected. In his analysis of Bentham’s design, Foucault suggested that this one-way observational approach had self-normalizing effects on prisoners. Since prisoners never knew for certain if they were being observed, they tended to conduct themselves in socially desirable ways and to act like “good” prisoners at all times.

The possibility that smart-dust technology can accelerate society in this direction is real and palpable, so we have some hard questions to ask ourselves. A central nervous system for Planet Earth composed of billions of tiny, interacting, autonomous sensors and computers is now a reality. Are we ready for Little Brother?