MEMS

[Robert Hettinga]

At  9:15 PM 11/1/94 -0500, John Young wrote:

>Benevolent advances on the ankle monitors cherished by
>half-free culprits.  Position indicators, DNA IDs, body
>condition monitors (drugs, anyone), Nicoderm patches, first put
>on soldiers for their protection and survival, to ease the way
>to more general acceptance, kind of like the G.I. Bill for
>tomorrow.

One of the first places I read about this personal transponder stuff was in
a book by G.K. O'Neill, of space colony fame. The book _2081_ (published in
1981, obviously), talks among other things (he thought magnetic levitated
trains in evacuated tunnels were *way* cool) about transponders, and the
uses of them in all kinds of computing, including electronic commerce of a
sort: pick up the object you want to buy in a store and walk out with it.
The store's systems know what the object is, who you are, and sends a
message to your bank to deduct the amount from your account.

He thought we were going to have to give up privacy to get this boon (and
others which I can't remember), but with PKC and blind signatures, we know
better now.

Of course we also know now that he was copying Xerox PARC ubiquitous
computing studies straight into his Apple II, but I had never heard of
PARC, much less ubiquitous computing, and was amazed by the idea at the
time.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

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