Following the smart wearables on the market, now come the term “nearables technologies” to describe the technologies that allow smart objects to communicate with the receiving devices within a few meters’ distance via Bluetooth Smart protocol. The release of low-energy example of such technologies, iBeacon (as an indoor positioning system) from Apple in 2013 has further promoted the conceptualization and realization of the Internet of Things (IoT), where almost everything, including humans, can be positioned as smart objects in the near future carrying wireless beacons.
With the near comes the far. If “Near” means a few meters’ range, by the sense of a beacon, “Far” will be a distance of more than 10 meters away. TriStrategist believes that very soon, new developments will enable “farables technologies” to fill in the picture of ubiquitous computing and IoT of the future.
Imagine a future world, with or without one’s knowledge, everyone becomes a smart object emitting signals constantly about their location and other personal profile information. Even with the modern encryption technologies or proprietary communication protocols, no matter how advanced, if any of these signals is captured by some ill-intentioned party, all information about this person can be potentially exposed and misused. It’ll be a grave privacy and security concern. Many today’s hacking stories have already demonstrated that no advanced technology setup can be truly hack-proof.
Could anyone escape this scenario? Not easy. In the near future, the clothes you dress, the shoes and socks you wear, the jewelry you pick, any piece of personal item you carry, of course your cell phone or any gadget with you, could all have sensors built in. The legal Opt-Out checkbox only fools the unsuspicious. TriStrategist thinks that our society will soon be in real and imminent need for “Escapable Technologies” – complex technologies that can allow the signal shielding or effective signal interference from the individual carrier so that a private person can choose to become “invisible” from any electronic signal receiver or monitoring screen.
A stealth plane carries special coating and is designed in carefully measured optical geometry to become nearly invisible to the radar. An “invisible man” on stage, performed by a magician, usually takes advantage of the lighting of the surroundings and wears special reflective clothing. Similarly, TriStrategist believes that future “escapables” from the electronic or optical signal receivers, may need a combination of different advanced technologies. Complete sensor signal shielding would be ideal, but may be hard to design and may not apply to all situations. Interference may be another approach. The signals or data captured, mixed with the interferences from the “escapables”, would become unreadable or undecipherable by majority of the receivers. These “escapables technologies”, once on the market and mature, could become far more valuable than any of the sensor technologies in the near future.
What else? Welcome to the new world where we will be experiencing numerous new technology innovations, new cultures and new vocabularies along with the explosive changes around us.