As it turns out, +2,147,483,647 is not just the largest 32 bit signed integer you’ll find most anyplace, it’s also a prime number.

32 bit, signed integer, prime, prime number, 32 bit signed integer, computing

Via Gizmodo, we make money not art, and The Engineer: spray-on computers.

The idea is to develop computers about the size of a grain of sand (though they say a cubic millimeter here), give them sensors and networking capabilities, and completely change our notion of “computer.”

From The Engineer:

Each Speck will be autonomous, with its own captive, renewable energy source. Thousands of Specks, scattered or sprayed on a person or surfaces, will collaborate in programmable computational networks called Specknets. Scientists are even considering the idea of a putting the devices in a spray-can, allowing the Specks to be sprayed onto a whatever surface they wish.

In the short term, engineers imagine a number of useful, but not revolutionary uses for these Specknets:

They could be used as lighting and temperature sensors in buildings, placed in aircraft wings to detect failures or used to sensitise medicine bottles to ensure that people take their prescribed medication at the correct times.

But don’t let that confuse you into thinking that they aren’t aware of the broader implications. Here it is straight from the Speckled Computing project website:

Speckled Computing is the culmination of a greater trend. As the once-separate worlds of computing and wireless communications collide, a new class of information appliances will emerge. Where once they stood proud — the PDA bulging in the pocket, or the mobile phone nestling in one’s palm, the post-modern equivalent might not be explicit after all. Rather, data sensing and information processing capabilities will fragment and disappear into everyday objects and the living environment. At present there are sharp dislocations in information processing capability — the computer on a desk, the PDA/laptop, mobile phone, smart cards and smart appliances. In our vision of Speckled Computing, the sensing and processing of information will be highly diffused — the person, the artefacts and the surrounding space, become, at the same time, computational resources and interfaces to those resources. Surfaces, walls, floors, ceilings, articles, and clothes, when sprayed with specks (or “speckled”), will be invested with a “computational aura” and sensitised post hoc as props for rich interactions with the computational resources.

computational networks, computer, computers, computing, computing fabric, computing project, idea, information appliances, information processing, nano-computing, nanocomputing, networking capabilities, smart appliances, specknet, specknets, specks, spray, spray-on, spray-on computer, spray-on computing, sprayon, ubicomp, ubiquitous computing

That headline might seem a little late among the folks reading this. But we’re all geeks, and if not geeks, then at least regular computer users. Regular computer users, however, are a minority. Worldwide, only around 500 million people have internet access, and fewer than 100 million people in the US have internet access at home. With populations of over 6 billion and 300 million respectively, there’s clearly a lot of growth potential.

Truth is, computers are the poor cousins to phones and television in terms of market penetration. In the US, Nielsen estimates there are over 275 million people with TVs in their homes today, and the CTIA says there are over 180 million mobile phone users.

The market opportunity is clear, but I think our notions of what a “computer” is have to change. Yes, computers have been through a lot of changes in 20 some odd years, but they’re still very much the same. Some might say that cars are basically the same as they were 100 years ago because they all mostly run around of four wheels and be happy with it. But transportation has seen tremendous change. Computers as we know them don’t own the internet any more than cars own the road or railroad or bike trails or skies.

Email was the killer app that made people interconnect their networks, the web was the killer app that got 90+ million users online already. And those users are the critical mass that pushes the development of real web applications — applications that are starting to beat desktop apps at their own game and doing things that desktop apps can’t.

With this flowering age of web applications, the age of internet connected information devices is coming. But we need something different from the computers we’ve become accustomed to. We need a device that is designed to serve the 90 million Americans who have cell phones, but don’t appear to have their own computers or home internet access. We need a device that replaces TVs as the leading entertainment and news medium. Because the information age will have arrived when there’s a dozen kiosks in every mall hawking internet tablets and we see them lined up at Best Buy with differentiated models for the kitchen, living room, the kids rooms, and for camping.

Background: this post is grew out of some discussion at TeleRead, NoSheep, and here at MaisonBisson.

tags: access, change, change computers, computer, computing, critical mass, desktop apps, email, geek, geeks, information age, information system, internet, internet access, internet connected, killer app, market opportunity, network, paradigm shift, penetration, portable computing, web, web applications