![Marines Want Better Networks, Sensors — And Terminator Vision
[Marines] want data networks that can keep them connected all the way from the decks of their ships to the beaches they storm. They want online search tools that rely on natural language instead of keywords (like the rest of us). And they want software that can sift through the oceans of data their wartime sensors and cameras collect — including tools that can scan through faces in a crowd, like the Terminator, and alert Marines to danger.
That’s according to the Corps’ blueprint for its science and technology needs over the next 20 years. Communications are a big, gaping hole for the Marines of the present, and the Marines want to hand their successors more seamless, networked ways of talking. That’s on top of other wish-list material, like advanced sensors that can sniff drugs and homemade bombs — oh, and laser-stopping goggles.
…From “flagpole to fighting hole,” the blueprint writes, Marines need to be in constant communication: “The objective is to provide a holistic, end-to-end, turnkey [command-and-control] capability to execute commander’s intent, facilitate implicit communications, visualize battlespace reality, promote initiative, enable centralized command and decentralized control, and ultimately accomplish the mission.”
(via smarterplanet)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3en8nUr0h1qzs4rbo1_500.jpg)
Marines Want Better Networks, Sensors — And Terminator Vision
[Marines] want data networks that can keep them connected all the way from the decks of their ships to the beaches they storm. They want online search tools that rely on natural language instead of keywords (like the rest of us). And they want software that can sift through the oceans of data their wartime sensors and cameras collect — including tools that can scan through faces in a crowd, like the Terminator, and alert Marines to danger.
That’s according to the Corps’ blueprint for its science and technology needs over the next 20 years. Communications are a big, gaping hole for the Marines of the present, and the Marines want to hand their successors more seamless, networked ways of talking. That’s on top of other wish-list material, like advanced sensors that can sniff drugs and homemade bombs — oh, and laser-stopping goggles.
…From “flagpole to fighting hole,” the blueprint writes, Marines need to be in constant communication: “The objective is to provide a holistic, end-to-end, turnkey [command-and-control] capability to execute commander’s intent, facilitate implicit communications, visualize battlespace reality, promote initiative, enable centralized command and decentralized control, and ultimately accomplish the mission.”
(via smarterplanet)
CIA Chief: "Internet of Things" Increases Surveillance Opportunities
More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them.
Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired devices — at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”
If history is any indication, we should assume that any technology that is going to have a significant impact over the next 10 years is already 10 years old
Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, author Sketching User Experiences
(via smarterplanet)
IBM open-sources ‘Internet of Things’ protocol
IBM announced it is joining with Italy-based hardware architecture firm Eurotech in donating a complete draft protocol for asynchronous inter-device communication to the Eclipse Foundation, ReadWriteWeb reports.
A projected 24 billion simultaneous devices — sending billions of messages per hour — including RFID tags on shipping crates, heart rate monitors, GPS devices, smartphone firmware, automobile maintenance systems, and even earrings may become more socially active than any teenager presently alive by the year 2020.
The new asynchronous inter-device communication protocol is called Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), the machine-to-machine counterpart of HTTP (used on websites).
(via smarterplanet)
