The bugs used by spies and spooks have just taken a step closer to resembling their namesakes. Harvard University engineers have produced a life-size robotic fly that uses the same mechanical principles as living insects to get around. Its potential utility as a surveillance platform is obvious enough, and as the article notes, it might make a useful mobile sensor for hazardous or inaccessible locations … but I wonder what uses the street will find for this sort of technology once they can be fabbed cheaply en masse? I’m thinking advertising. [Gizmodo]
Right now if I show this to a mundane person ™, i.e. an average citizen, that person will shrug in just about the same way as he or she would if I shower him or her the first integrated circuit somewhere in, say 1965.
“it’ll never amount to anything” they’ll claim reflexively.
Then I’d love to show them a 3D video of a cyberswarm of several ten thousand
Forget Privacy. We’ve already crippled ourselves with so many silly worries about privacy. Now this one will make that a moot issue. Expect huge sales of these puppies to paparazzi. Personally, while I’d find them an annoyance, they probably will be a bonanza for anti-terrorism and destroying violent crime.
Expect to find other uses, like industrial espionage, following suspected spouses, along with others nobody imagines yet.
I just want to know what happens when you accidentally swallow one when riding your bike. tiny explosion?