Secrecy is Weakness: For Beginners

[tarmle]

Answer honestly: why would you not want your family to know where you are?

Microsoft researchers are working on a wall mounted display wich will allow busy families to keep track of each other. Researchers have christened it as the "whereabout clock". They agree to being partially inspired by Harry Potter novels. The whereabout clock's screen uses

Comments

[spikee_d]

As mobile communications develop it's not surprising that each application of this technology is compacted. A watch that also acts as a personal organiser and alarm clock is an example. Apply that to mobile phones and computers, the lines are already getting blurred with mobiles that act as laptops. I imagine one day you will be able to buy a laptop/mobile/mp3 playing device built into an armband on the hardware side, on the software side you could take text messaging to the next level with a form of MSN developed for such technology. You could appear 'on-line' so other people with the technology can see what pub you are in and send messages direct to you to see if you're up for a pint. With the advent of Google earth and GPRS as well as concerns over loved ones locations I can see such devices becoming more widespread.

[tarmle]

I have to agree. I've always thought adhoc networks are the future of mobile IT. I envisage tiny warble PC devices that connect to all other such devices within range to form vast, independent, super-redundant communication networks with holographic addressing structures. It would almost function at an inverse relation to current cell network traffic flow - the busier it is the faster it runs since to be that busy it must have more nodes joining and more nodes means greater capacity and greater range. It would make the most sophisticated mobiles on the market today look like tins on strings.

From a SIW point of view such a system would be making as much of our personal computing and communications power publicly available for distributed computing and file swarming networks. It would be far more reasonable than the current trend which is to lock everything down behind firewalls only to leave it doing nothing for most of the time.