Sensors are becoming increasingly powerful while dropping in size and costs. The "commodization" of the underlying component technologies allows sensors to become ubiquitous and more prevalent. At the same time cell phones are being experimented with as short-term storage devices for sensing data. This allows personal communication devices to act as nodes in distributed networks.

Within the next three years there will be an increasing number of sensors which integrate with our computing and personal communication devices. These will lead to a proliferation of new inputs which will help us better understand our environment. At the same time, the persistence of these sensing networks will raise privacy issues.