The Internet of Things, Moving Beyond the Refrigerator
Posted: March 2nd, 2006 | No Comments »A Manifesto for Networked Objects — Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things, thoughtfully written by Julian Bleecker, is an output from the workshop on Blogjects/Networked Things I participated to last month.
This manifesto engages us to think about the opportunities for enrolling Things into a thick and messy imbroglios of social interactions between humans and objects. With his blogjects, Julian brings humanist values (first-class citizenship, aiming at world 2.0, a more habitable world) to the RFID-enabled-refrigerator Internet of Things.
My perception of blogjects is that they are an application of the Internet of Things that I would preferably name a Web of Things. There are about generating content, meaning, and agency within the social web. Something that came out of the workshop (at least for Nikolaus Correll and I) was that blogjects hardly create an ecosystem. The exchanging and circulating (therefore I/O) information is not clear. I find the examples of very sophisticated robots (aibo) and animals (blogging pigeon) rather misleading. Primarily because I do not think that blogjects should necessarily have any “intelligence” (limited to a specific agency and actions). The “food for thoughts/meanings” emerge from flocks (interaction of simple individuals – swarm intelligence) rather than from animal/human-like behavioral individuals. It is the flock of pigeons that can interact with the Bay Area’s cars and drivers to make them aware of their own polution. Besides, would you like a pigeon to reach Robert Scoble‘s social status? Well, me neither…
A future Robert Scoble? (left). My vision of the Internet of Things while writing this…(right)
Relations to my thesis: In a pervasive world, objects interconnect and our perceptions and relations with them will change. I am interested in how this chaos can be managed. Features and scenarios around blogjects bring relevant clues to enter the post-refrigirator era of the Internet of Things.
