The first mention most people over 50 years of age had of the term “sensors” was in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek television series, which fi rst aired in the United States in 1966. This groundbreaking science fi ction program almost predictably used this term when Captain Kirk would ask Spock or some lesser member of the Enterprise’s crew to give him sensor readings of a planet’s surface as the starship arrived at its destination many light years in space. As children or teenagers, the concept of a sensor became clear. It was some kind of gadget that would give us information about a place without us having to be there. That sounded cool and we ate it up. People were fascinated by watching their fi rst visual example of how ubiquitous computing worked as they saw doors automatically open. They also saw how ambient conditions in crew quarters and the starship, in general, were set by voice command and sensors then controlled the ambient conditions according to the parameters set by the crewmembers. And we can never forget how Leonard “Bones” McCoy could monitor and control many basic functions to keep his patients alive and well. Ubiquitous computing and wireless communications made all of these science fi ction things possible. Back then, people did not know that much of that future, hundreds of years away, would be reality within 50 years. Today, millions of Americans and others living around the world fondly remember this series and some are almost religiously fanatical about the view of a humanity that no longer was at war with each other and used technology to further human growth and evolution at a time when the world lived under the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation.
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