The Digital Civilizations Interviews

... about networks...

These microchips communicate with one another. It’s one of their primary functions. Even the smallest passive RFID tag has an antenna so that it can be read (like when a product leaves a warehouse or passes through the automatic cash register at a supermarket, for example). Eventually, microchips scattered throughout our environment should be able to self locate (geolocalisation), connect with others via a network, and communicate long distance with processing centres or their owners, etc. To do so, they will use “ubiquitous” networks, wireless or wired, that can fluidly relay information, no matter what technology is being used. These are the same networks we will use, the ones that will render the current distinction between “land” and “mobile” systems of communication obsolete.

... about “intelligence”

If we endowed objects and places with the ability to measure, process, communicate and act, microchips could have three further functions:

• Improve our knowledge – from scientific knowledge (Neptune, the submarine observatory, will extend cables, sensors and cameras over 200 000 km2 of the Pacific Ocean, producing a continuous flow of information available not only to scientists but also to schools) to video surveillance, the management of large infrastructures of transportation, or the surveillance of high-risk zones
• Optimise, even automate complex processes – this could be the «Machine to machine» model, increasingly at use in IT, or the long-distance surveillance of facilities, or even manufacturing in robotised factories…
• Provide new services by adding new functions to objects that are now “communicative,” such as a vehicle that can detect impending danger, a room that adjusts itself to its occupant, an item of clothing that measures the vital statistics of the person wearing it, carpet that changes colour in accordance with the next day’s weather, a cushion that one holds close in order to send a long-distance hug…