Abstract
The brave new world of ambient intelligence is almost upon us. Ambient intelligence is the phrase coined to describe a world in which “intelligence” is embedded in virtually everything around us. It has been called an Internet of things, where radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are attached to all products. It is a world of smart dust with networked sensors and actuators so small as to be virtually invisible, where the clothes you wear, the paint on your walls, the carpets on your floor, and the paper money in your pocket have a computer communications capability. It is a 4G world where today’s mobile phone is transformed into a terminal capable of receiving television, accessing the Internet, downloading music, reading RFIDs, taking pictures, enabling interactive video telephony, and much more. It is a world of convergence, where heterogeneous devices are able to communicate seamlessly across today’s disparate networks, a world of machine learning and intelligent software, where computers monitor our activities, routines and behaviours to predict what we will do or want next. In the brave new world of ambient intelligence, we will never have to worry about losing track of our children because they will have a location device implanted under the skin or, if they are squeamish about that, then at least they will have one in their wristwatch.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer Science + Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ahonen, P. et al. (2008). Introduction. In: Wright, D., Friedewald, M., Punie, Y., Gutwirth, S., Vildjiounaite, E. (eds) Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6662-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6662-7_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8786-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-6662-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)