Simple Sensors, Privacy, and Open Data

Almost a year into my sales and marketing position at Sensorcon, I really started thinking about not what we ARE doing, but rather what we COULD BE doing.

It’s a bold leap to try to make. The future is about revenue, but it doesn’t create immediate revenue, so you need to temper the wish list with a healthy dose of your current SKU list. That’s how you pay the bills.

One of the concepts that’s important to me is “zero handedness”. Sure, wearable technology approaches that in a lot of ways for the health and fitness industry. The question for an environmental sensor company like ours though is finding out how to be disruptive… without being disruptive.

It’s about collecting, storing, and sharing data that is actionable by people, and by machines. And the less hands or keystrokes involved, the better.

If you look at how Google Now (or potentially Siri and whatever Microsoft is working on) interacts with you, the potential is at our fingertips to really have environmental sensors work with you in real time: to examine environmental variables and have a medium do things for you through alerts, or even physical pokes and prods.

Of course, we can also broadcast that data into open science type databases passively, creating a hands free citizen science program that accurately describes air quality conditions in urban areas, or indoor air quality metrics where we all live and work.

So the challenge becomes two fold: One, in understanding exactly what data we would be WILLING to share passively, and then weighing that against what we could DO with that kind of data in an open science environment. Secondarily, we would need to provide some kind of context for that data in most cases. If a H2S or UV reading is high, so what? It’s clearly in an area where a sensor wearer is, but it still doesn’t provide enough context to really be useful.

So, these are the things I think about: How to make good science, a little money, and life a little better for people in the meantime. There’s room for all 3 of those things to coexist peacefully. It’s just about finding that balance.