July 10, 2015

"New Model of ‘Smart Campus’? Carnegie Mellon to Embed Sensors Across Landscape."

"The idea is to make life more convenient, and to provide useful data about the campus, said Anind K. Dey, the project’s lead investigator and an associate professor at the university’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute."
Eventually, the experiment is to expand into the city of Pittsburgh, in hospitals, at bus stops, on bridges.

Mr. Dey envisions that the campus could be wired with temperature sensors, cameras, microphones, humidity sensors, vibration sensors, and more in order to provide people with information about the physical world around them. Students could determine whether their professors were in their offices, or see what friends were available for lunch....

“It should radically change the experiences people have in their spaces,” Mr. Dey said.... “How does this change us,” he said, “when everything around us is sensed and available?”

23 comments:

tim in vermont said...

That's how it starts. I remember when network surveillance was an innocent term for techniques that were solely intended to detect, isolate, and diagnose network problems.

Then the NSA got a whiff of what was in there.

Vet66 said...

One more serious intrusion on the privacy of individuals. Big Brother/Big Sister helping the children never to grow up and always dependent on the government "Sugar Daddy." Reach far enough into the government pocket for goodies and you don't know what you are going to come up with.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

How the hell are you supposed to sneak into the steam tunnels if there are sensors everywhere?

tim in vermont said...

We should have known it would lead to abuse when one of the developers was using it to track his wife who was too pretty for him.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Who cares how our experiences and us are changed, just make it radical!

Seize the day! You only live once!

Michael K said...

Read Michael Totten's description of Cuba and the Panopticon to see where this is going.

Surveillance is just the start.

campy said...

I hope they're rigged to sound an alarm when they detect microaggressions.

MadisonMan said...

I think the temperature and humidity data could be very interesting, and I hope it's freely available.

rhhardin said...

The panopticon was insensitive to red. Maybe that was the orthoopticon.

Brian said...

This has come up at my school --- in the context of a proposed science building that would be heavily sensor-fitted so as to be an instrument of science itself. My response to the idea was and is:

"That sounds like a fascinating idea. You could learn a lot about how people interact with each other and with the building. Also, I am very glad I will not be expected to work there."

Jay Vogt said...

Does no one remember the great Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner".

Didn't turn out so well, did it?

Jay Vogt said...

Also a new tag should be added: "I'm skeptical - duh!"

Peter said...

“How does this change us,” he said, “when everything around us is sensed and available?”

How does it change us when we are constantly immersed in a virtual screen-mediated world filled with representations of the physical world, instead of interacting directly in and with that physical world?

mikeski said...

My son is starting there in the fall. Good to know that this is where my $66k/year is going.

mccullough said...

More data for the Chinese to hack

Wince said...

Aren't college campuses too sensitive already?

Original Mike said...

What could possibly go wrong?

rehajm said...

in order to provide people with information about the physical world around them

Pet rocks work, too.

lgv said...

I like the "I'm skeptical" tag, but I wonder what specifically AA is skeptical about?

"Hey, I wonder if my girlfriend is nearby so we can meet for lunch. Oh, look! She's in the stacks right now. Wait, she's a physical ed major, what would she doing in the stacks?"

Known Unknown said...

"How the hell are you supposed to sneak into the steam tunnels if there are sensors everywhere?"

Are you a Tartan?



Known Unknown said...

This is simultaneously interesting and terrible news.

Levi Starks said...

This is sooooo 1984....

Ignorance is Bliss said...

EMD said...

Are you a Tartan?

Yeah, '89, Applied Math ( Computer Science ).

And you? ( I assume so, since you caught the reference. )