Chalk another one up for Vernor Vinge. This tech seems like it could directly enable the “ubiquitous surveillance” from _A Deepness in the Sky_. Definitely something to watch closely.

Also the scatterable surveillance cameras used in his other great novel, 'The Peace War' [0]. Although IIRC they were the size of seeds or similar.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peace_War

I've been interested in smart dust for a while; recently the news seems to have dried up, and while that may have been other stuff taking up all the attention (and investment money), I suspect that many R&D teams went under government NDAs because they are now good enough to be interesting.

I wonder if someone tried to build a localizer how small they could actually be made?

PS It's "Vernor"

I haven't read deepness in the sky but it's interesting how wrong alot of scifi got this. Cameras are always considerably bigger than grains of sand

Or Rudy Rucker’s Postsingular, where the “orphidnet” utility fog enables universal perception/visualization.

"Light of Other Days"/"Other Days, Other Eyes" by Bob Shaw is much closer - and poignant - take on that idea.