While I am no Luddite, I do believe that consistent over-reliance on technology often has the effect of dulling human senses and locking the average person into the realm of the known and the measured. This would be devastating to Intelligence gathering that depends on human awareness of the red flag, the discordant note, the hunch… as well as the ability to report findings back to decision-makers in good time.

An article I recently read refers to inexpensive sensors attached to any object, human or otherwise, that easily communicate data/findings back to a network in any number of combinations - Sounds ultra cool, but I am guessing the sensors can only report back in line with known programming… What about stuff that has never been recorded or measured …Much like on-line customer service, the human attempt to report back is often thwarted if it does not fit into a pre-decided category. Worse still, will our awareness become so dimmed that we will not even notice anything untoward?

For the full article:

http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?sub=true&id=53030