The other day, I was sitting in Starbucks and an employee was cleaning behind one of the stainless steel pieces of equipment. I could hear the spray bottle trigger and the hissing sound, and he must have pumped out half the bottle, and it was mixed strong, I could smell it from way across the store. I decided to take my Frappachino out to the patio, eventually I was joined by another patron, who came out for the same reason.
She said she couldn't stand it and had allergies, which made sense, and I wondered if the other customers, as the store was full, couldn't smell it at all? There are lots of chemical in the air these days, and it would be nice if folks could avoid them, but how you ask? Well, it turns out that some folks at Michigan Technology University have developed a smart phone camera technology which will enable the digital camera onboard to see down to 100 nanometers.
If we could miniaturize this camera, which there is no doubt we could, especially with the help of the military, DARPA for instance, then we could have smart phone makers mass produce them keeping the price down, then put them in every smart phone. Why would the military research arm spend the money on something like this? Well, imagine the benefits in the battlespace for Chemical and Biological Weapons. And imagine the benefit of having a 100 million Americans with smart phone sniffers.
If something was wrong the smart phone device's quantum dot would alert the phone to take a minute sample of the air, take a picture, send that wirelessly to the Cloud data center, determine what the chemical was and in the case of my Starbucks experience the other day, it would come back;
Harmful Chemical = Cleaning Chemical Class
VOC count 250 Parts Per Million = VOC safe count 4 Parts Per Million
The phone would then recommend getting to fresh air as soon as appropriate, by alerting the user. Something like this would be great for worker's safety, terrorist attacks, or incidental environmental everyday chemicals which are not all that serious in small amounts, but certainly not healthy to breathe in for any duration if not absolutely necessary. Should we invest in something like this? Well, there is a market, it's a nice feature, and think of all the APPs that could be created if this technology were available? It makes sense doesn't it?
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Future Military Technologies. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/
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