In a move which leaves me both amazed and rubbing my eyes in sympathetic irritation, University of Michigan researchers developed what is believed to be the first complete millimeter-scale computing system...
to be put in your eye. It is designed to monitor and transmit pressure information for glaucoma patients. The update to turn us into mindless automatons will no doubt be available via a low-cost firmware upgrade.
It reminds me of "
Metatropolis
" and other similar scifi stories where humanity has shifted away from singular huge scale projects to a multitude of nano scale creations. A case in point is from
Metatropolis:Cascad
ia in which the narrator mentions "Camera dust". Singular cameras of normal size can see more, but cameras the size of the above nanocomputer can be much more cheaply manufactured and scattered around anywhere. One nanocamera can see very little. A network of thousands can see practically everything. Not so far fetched anymore. And yes, that thing IS networkable. Check out the description from PhysOrg below.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-pen.html
"In a package that's just over 1 cubic millimeter, the system fits an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory, a thin-film battery, a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device that would be held near the eye."
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