A single of the major suggestions behind IBM's Smarter Planet concept is a web of sensors all about the planet, top to a data explosion. But what if that net of sensors was a lot more directly beneath the public's management? Strategic forecast advisor Chris Arkbenberg hits on an intriguing concept in a current web site publish. He muses on the thought of making use of cellular phones for grid computing, a la SETI@house, to develop substantial distributed supercomputers for processing all of this data. "Consider the processing power latent across a metropolis of twenty million mobile subscribers, this kind of as Tokyo," he writes.

Arkenberg can take the thought more by suggesting that sensors could be created into cellular phones that could check air top quality or act as a kind of distributed surveillance program. The prospects are unlimited. "Take into account what could be carried out with an API for addressing clusters of mobile sensors," he writes.

The thought reminds me of Open Sailing's SwarmOS, which aims to support folks make selections based mostly on the collective intelligence documented by "swarms" of end users with mobile phones. Incorporating sensors to that mix is a strong notion.

Arkenberg warns that such a network and API could also be exploited by insurgents, criminals or regimes. Significantly like the massive data sets created by surveillance, there's a good deal of probable for unsavory makes use of of this kind of information. But the thoughts boggles at the possibilities.

Despite the fact that there's a distinct possibility for abuse by authorities, a decentralized strategy to measuring air quality could help examine authorities. For illustration, The Economist documented very last week that the mayor of Madrid has been accused of relocating air pollution monitoring techniques from the city's streets to parks, in which the sensors would detect significantly less pollution.

Other, far more centralized attempts at creating an urban working technique include IBM's perform in Rio and PlanIT in Portugal.

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