On Smart... Dust

Prior to the spring of 2020, the majority of mankind was likely to have smiled in polite disbelief at the thought of the government being our best friend, our Protective Father, our defender through thick and thin, in dire times and against a common enemy. Now we name-call our neighbors and relatives — or rat them out and abandon them — when we suspect they fail to comply with whatever measures our Protective Father requires we accept and submit ourselves to to save us from that common enemy. But what if that common enemy isn't called Covid but Smart Dust?

Smart Dust is a cute word for "wireless devices as small as a grain of salt that have sensors, cameras and communication mechanisms to transmit the data they collect back to a base in order to process" (source: Forbes). We can breathe them in and they can be injected into our bloodstream for all the right medical reasons. I hope you see where this is going. Let that sink in for a moment: nano computers so small they can be breathed in. No, this is not science fiction. This is M.I.T., Berkeley and the military. 

Slowly but surely we have been turned into internet addicts over the past decades, as sensors in our phones, iPads, iCars, iTampons, iToilets and our cities have been becoming an accepted component in our everyday lives. As those sensors eventually became so small that they could be integrated in every piece of ourselves and our environments, it shouldn't come as a surprise that now the Smart Ones That Be have now developed networked, atomized, computerized micro particles that enable space to sense, intercommunicate and activate. 

That space includes us.

The problem as I see it is that we, as a species, have been gradually losing our alertness and our willingness to act ever since the internet took over in the mid-nineties. Craving our quick fix of smart phone intel, we have been pampered to the extent that we would rather watch a 30-second cat video on YouTube than invest some time in critical thinking. We have become dependable and gullible. We want to press a button and enjoy, and it had better not be something that requires hard work or we lose interest. Netflix? Yes, please. Bringthatshittomydoorstep.com? Yes, of course.

It is in this social atmosphere of feet-up-on-the-couch-and-check-out-that-app that we have become a sitting duck. Are you willing to do some research and look into the potential dangers of literal clouds of intelligent dust? Are you prepared to invest some time in how the government is trying hard to protect us against a new technology so invasive it won't hesitate to enter your body? Computers so small they pull power from the air? (source: TheWall Street Journal) Has it ever occurred to you that the government, too, would be very interested in who you really are? Think about it.

Think: Breathe in, breathe out. Smart Dust.

Think: Vaccine.

Think: Smart Dust. Would mouth masks protect me?

Then do an ostrich and check out that new cat video.

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