Distributed Environmental Data: On the Ground at the Data Sensing Lab

http://oreil.ly/DistNetData

Sensors are the future of distributed data. General-purpose computing is dissipating out into the environment and becoming increasingly invisible and embedded into our lives. We will soon begin to move in a sea of data, our movements tracked and our environments measured and adjusted to our preferences, without need for direct intervention.

At the Strata Conference in New York last year, we gave attendees a taste of the super-connected world that's ahead of all of us by instrumenting the conference environment with basic off-the-shelf sensors and mesh networking. At the Strata Conference in Santa Clara this February, we will observe and report on the conference once again, with more sensors, real-time visualization, and some new interactive features for attendees.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Carey G. Butler]

If we continue in this vein, we'll be able to create a sensor 'skin' for the earth making the whole organism a sensor grid. A sobering concept indeed. Soon we may find ourselves irrelevant. Is this science or is it premature globalism acting like it?

[John Walter]

"Big data is a reality no one escapes from." Wow. Great piece.