What Is Smart Dust, Anyway?
Facial-recognition cameras are so 2001 – at least when it comes to stirring up paranoia among privacy hand-wringers. The bogeyman of the moment is smart dust, a network of speck-sized machines that can suss out whether sarin is in the air, enemy troops are around the corner, or the mean temperature on Mars has dropped. Smart-dust particles are designed to float through the air as innocuously as dandelion seeds, gathering and transmitting data in real time. (www.pinkroom.net)″> Pinkroom (www.pinkroom.net) The father of smart dust is UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor Kris Pister. Six years ago, he went to Darpa with a proposal for outfitting silicon slivers with microscopic surveillance equipment. Such infinitesimal devices are commonly known as microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS. Creating the dust isn’t so different from making computer chips: You start with a silicon wafer, then coat it with a metal film that allows microstructures to be etched into its surface. U
