Battery-free smart skin enables perpetual, inconspicuous ambient surveillance networks

Evidence

Consider “smart skin,” developed by brilliant university scientists and now poised for commercial elaboration. Initially valued for its ability to monitor and diagnosis health conditions from Parkinson’s disease to sleep disorders, smart skin is now hailed for its promise of ultra-unobtrusive ubiquity. Researchers at Georgia Tech developed a version of “smart skin” that sucks energy from radio waves and other energy sources, eliminating the need for batteries. Smart skin, described as “the ultimate sensing tool that could potentially allow for the mass implementation of perpetual wireless networks,” can cognize, sense, analyze, wirelessly communicate, and “modify parameters” using simple radio frequency (RFID) technology. As in the case of Paradiso’s “sensor tape,” the researchers stress that it can also “be applied everywhere” to “monitor, sense, and interact with the world around us in a perpetual way, thus significantly enhancing ambient intelligence,” all of it as inconspicuous as a “decal sticker.” They suggest, for example, the shelves of grocery stores, where revenue opportunities are plentiful. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 753

Categorization

• BMF: This perpetual, sticker-thin, always-aware sensing surface evokes HAL 9000’s all-seeing presence in 2001, and more obliquely the One State’s networked surveillance in We — an echo of ubiquitous ambient intelligence across these works.
• XREF: connects to: Consultants frame the connected car as a proving ground for IoT surveillance — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 673; Google aims to weave sensing capability directly into everyday materials — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 769; Georgia Tech’s 2000 Aware Home prototype embedded context-aware sensors in a house. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 28 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• City dwellers deploy avoidance devices to carve privacy from public space #complicates (0.80)
• Georgia Tech’s 2000 Aware Home prototype embedded context-aware sensors in a house. #exemplifies (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 28
• Surveillance capitalism requires ubiquitous computing but not the reverse #complicates (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 632
• Home-device privacy policies extract biometric and audio data from entire households #expands (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 741