Locative media as a term shares with another term, the ‘Internet of Things’, the very up-to-date attempt to define the technical and cultural shift anticipated in the society as it moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and in some way connected to the Internet. Through different location based technologies, we create a data sphere for the Internet that offers up new possibilities to locate or ‘attach’ the digital to objects, space and people.

This is the starting point for rethinking our relationship with the physical world, and we can begin to imagine scenarios where the physical and digital spheres collapse onto each other. One important element in the equation refers to the kind of agency objects and spaces will have in this relationship. As a case study the article will present a project titled Inmemory, developed and presented in Edinburgh at the Inspace gallery in June 2010. Inmemory aims to explore how personal or collective stories coupled to objects and/or spaces could transform our current value system across communities and society. Inmemory main aim is to investigate in practical terms the emerging field of the ‘Internet of Things’ culturally and technologically. The creative, artistic and interactive potential of the ‘Internet of Things’ is the central point of investigation in relation to three main elements: object, memory and agency.

Burke, M., Hudson-Smith, A., Karpovich, A., O’Callaghan, S., Simpson, M., Speed, C., Barthel, R., Blundell, B., De Jode, M., Leder, K., Manohar, M., Lee, C., Macdonald, J.

Abstract
RFID, radio frequency identification, is a technology that is now rapidly being developed by corporations and governments who see the possibilities and advantages of managing large bodies of objects. By seamlessly embedding an RFID chip into an object, it is possible to assign it a unique identification, allowing databases of specific item/location/relationship information to be generated, providing for real-time identification and tracking over the course of its life from cradle to grave.

The use of RFID in conjunction with database technologies allows us to understand a truly ubiquitous network, an Internet of Things, which offers up new possibilities in which our environment becomes a conduit of information transfer between people to people, people to things, and things themselves. This generates a new perspective in the way we view and interact with the Internet. No longer are we outside this mass of information, curating its content in a web 2.0 model of tags, keywords and trackbacks, instead we share the network with objects capable of communicating what they are, and what is going on in the space around them; active members of society, contributing not only to the social web, but also the physical world.

1. Introduction
The term Internet of Things refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and in some way connected to the Internet (Greenfield, 2006). The specific term ‘things’ refers to the concept that every new object manufactured will also be able to be a part of this extended Internet, having been tagged and indexed by the manufacturer during production.

This paper examines whether RFID can unexpectedly become a new platform for memory storage, and transform inert objects into vessels that allow for the imprint of experience to be shared over time. It reflects beyond the logistical benefits of the technology, and instead attempts to identify the social benefits that might arise.

2. Research Context: Why things matter
Proust states that ‘consumer goods aren’t really consumed at all – but experienced, either in memory or right now, as key elements of identity itself’ (1927 cited in Kwint, et al., 1999). In western traditions, objects serve memory in three main ways. Firstly they furnish recollection; constituting our picture of the past. Secondly, objects stimulate remembering, not only through the deployed mnemonics of public monuments, or mantelpiece souvenirs, but also by the serendipitous encounter bringing back experience which otherwise would have remained dormant, repressed or forgotten. Thirdly, objects form records: analogues to living memory, storing information beyond individual experience (Kwint, et al., 1999).

Baudrillard (1996) discuses the capacity for objects to evoke memories within us and the complexity of the relationship between human and object, connoting the ‘emotional value’ objects take on; ‘What gives houses of our childhood such depth and resonance in memory is clearly the complex structure of interiority, and the objects within it serve for us as boundary markers of the symbolic configuration known as home. In their anthropomorphism the objects that furnish it become household gods, spatial incarnations of the emotional bonds and the permanence of the family group’. He terms these objects technemes, items which consider not only their technical function but also the ideas, values, and fetishes connected to them, and describes them as being in a ‘perpetual flight from technical structure towards their secondary meanings, from technological system towards a cultural system’. It is clear that memories are intrinsically linked with objects; time and memory are embodied or encoded in our perception of everyday things. Draaisma (2000) refers to memories as a ‘store of precious items’ and like objects they too have a lifetime, part of a persons own cradle to grave. The advancement of technology from development of writing surfaces, to photography and cinematography, Edison’s phonograph and now a days numerous ‘artificial’ memories assist us in ‘arming ourselves against the transience implicit in the mortality of memory’ (Draaisma, 2000) by recording what the eye and ear take in.

However the Internet of Things not only has the capacity to serve as an interface for human memory storage, it can store the memory of the object itself. Sterling (2005) terms these objects Spimes, made possible through the convergence of emerging technologies, related to both the manufacturing process for consumer goods, and through identification and location technologies. Technologies that allow us track the entire existence of an object, from before it was made (its virtual representation), through its manufacture, its ownership history, its physical location, until its eventual obsolescence and breaking-down back into raw material to be used for new instantiations of objects. These objects when recorded, can be archived and searched for, as databases of specific item/location/relationship information which track the lifetime of an object through space and time are generated.

By embedding an object with RFID, turning it into a node of the Internet where it has the capacity to have its own identity, memory, and awareness of its environment, we transform it from an inert thing into an agent able to capture information about the happenings in its surroundings and communicate that information with other object nodes anywhere in the world. Bleeker (2006) coined these things blogjects; objects which will participate in the whole meaning-making apparatus that is now the social web, and that is be-coming the Internet of Things. Bleeker suggests that “things”, once plugged into the Internet will become agents that circulate food for thought, that “speak on” matters from an altogether different point of view, that lend a “thing-y” perspective on micro and macro social, cultural, political and personal matters.

3. Case Study: Lybster
The Memorable is a research project that aims to engage with the notion that objects can become more than their material form, by allowing an audience to engage with memories and objects central to the identity of a particular community. Lybster, in Caithness, Scotland, was – prior to the decline of the fishing industry in the early twentieth century – famous for being the third biggest herring port in Scotland. Recent times have seen its reinvention as a centre of excellence in glassmaking; the richness of the local environment, community and culture has proved to be inspirational to the visiting artists, with much of the resulting work embodying experience, associations or attachments. Object, memory and place has the ability to inspire creativity, and it is this close relationship that the research will investigate. The people of Lybster have been invited to donate objects that have significant meaning and stories attached. This association of memory to object will be recorded through a variety of interactive media and these artefacts will then be passed onto a group of chosen artists. With minimal intervention or guidance, the artists are invited to create work which responses, represents and communicates their feeling towards the area and those artefacts they have selected.

The invited artists already have a connection with Lybster and its surrounding area, having spent time in residency at North Lands Creative Glass, and the work aims to build upon and extend this relationship, tying together landscape, people, and object. In this way the creative output of the artists work not only takes into account the residents of Lybster’s reflection of their surroundings, but also that of the outsider, intertwining their instinctive association with place and identity. Commissioned as part of Annuale, the work is being shown as an interactive installation in summer 2010. The audience will be invited to handle the artefacts produced, triggering the original memories that formed them and projecting the recorded media into a gallery space. The project will be returned to Lybster and shown to the people who participated, with the aim that the artefacts produced will create and new associations and interpretations of the relationships that underpin the community, both on a local and national scale.

The Memorable project is located within a wider £1.3 million EPSRC funded research project, TOTeM (Tales of Things and Electronic Memory), which aims to provide a platform to allow memories to be attached to objects that already exist in the world. The TOTeM project is concerned with the memory and value of ‘old’ objects. It has been suggested that people surround themselves with between 1,000 and 5,000 objects. Of those thousands of objects many of them are probably not truly cared for and end up in rubbish bins or in storage. But for every owner, in almost every household there are a selection of objects that hold significant resonance, and will already connect them to an Internet of memory and meaning. Through the use of objects as conduits for memory, TOTeM expects to nurture understanding and communication across generations, cultures and tribes that many aspects of technology are marginalising. TOTeM offers a culturally and economically radical way of supporting a ‘memory economy’ in an age when looking forward is beginning to get us lost.

4. Conclusion
When we think of the kind of social networks that the Internet facilitates, we think of human agents participating in an exchange of ideas, centred on meaningful topics, whatever they may be. Until now “objects” and “things” have been conspicuously absent from this sphere of contributing to culture. This raises particular research questions as to whether networked objects can begin to express forms of social discourse, by producing acts that take into account the actions and reaction, and shapes the behavior of those it cohabitates with.

The important aspect of the Internet of Things is not that RFID and data transponders are now connected onto the Internet, allowing ever more complex and exhaustive instrumented machine-to-machine communication and data production. The significance of the Internet of Things is a network where it’s not simply enough for humans to apply the context of the content and its meaning. As objects go online they are transformed from something that occupies space as an inert thing, and means you’re no longer alone in the network; instead we see a real world where networked objects generate meaning for data, developing a semantic structure for the Internet which intensely maps the real world onto cyberspace in ever increasing detail. You will now share your environment with things that contribute information to the social web in the same way you do. Whereas the Internet of Non-Things was limited to human agents, in the Internet of Things objects are actors in the network; participants in the creation, maintenance and knitting together of social networks.

References
Appadurai, A. (1986). Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In A. Appadurai, ed. The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 1.
Baudrillard, J. (1996) System of ObjectsI, London: Verso
Bleeker, J. (2006) A Manifesto for Networked Objects – Cohabitating with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things, California: University of Southern California
Draaisma, D. (2000) Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas About the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Greenfield, A. (2006) Everyware, The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, Berkley: New Riders
International Telecommunications Union (2005) The Internet of Things, Geneva: ITU
Kwint, M., Breward, C., Aynsley, J. (1999) Material Memories, Design and Evocation, Oxford: Berg
Sterling, B. (2005) Shaping Things, Cambridge: MIT Press

Duncan Shingleton. EPSRC PhD Candidate. Edinburgh College of Art

Radio frequency identification, or RFID, is a technology that is now rapidly being developed by corporations and governments who see the possibilities and advantages of managing large bodies of objects. By seamlessly embedding an RFID chip into an object, we now assign it a unique identification, allowing databases of specific item/location/relationship information to be generated, giving each object its own identity for real-time identification and tracking.  RFID allows for more accurate inventories, automated re-ordering and improved market analysis; data capture that takes place without the need for line of sight or physical manipulation.

This paper reflects beyond the logistical benefits of the technology, and instead attempts to identify the social benefits that might arise. Tagged with an RFID chip, an object will have a unique digital identity and play a pivotal role in joining the physical world with the digital.  As this technology moves into products, sensitive documents and even the human body, an Internet of Things will emerge consisting of blogjects, spimes, cybrids, technemes, wearables and smartifacts; networked objects that are capable of communicating what they are, and what is going on in the space around them.

As we see what can only be defined as a truly ubiquitous network environment emerging, it offers up new possibilities where our environment becomes a conduit of information transfer between people to people, people to things, and things themselves. This generates a new perspective in the way we view and interact with the Internet. Now we are caught inside of the net, in an always-on, invisible stream of data transfer. No longer are we outside this mass of information, curating its content in a web 2.0 model of tags, keywords and trackbacks, instead we share the network with objects that become active members of society, contributing not only to the social web, but also the physical world.

Proposed is a working concept for an installation which allows an audience to engage with memories and objects central to the identity of a particular community. Lybster, in Caithness, Scotland, was – prior to the decline of the fishing industry in the early twentieth century – famous for being the third biggest herring port in Scotland. Recent times have seen its reinvention as a centre of excellence in glassmaking; the richness of the local environment, community and culture has proved to be inspirational to the visiting artists, with much of the resulting work embodying experience, associations or attachments.

Object, memory and place has the ability to inspire creativity and it is this close relationship, which the work will investigate. The people of Lybster will be invited to donate objects that have a significant meaning and stories attached. This association of memory to object will be recorded through a variety of interactive media and these artefacts will then be passed onto a group of chosen artists. With minimal intervention or guidance, the artists are invited to create work which responses, represents and communicates their feeling towards the area and those artefacts they have selected.

All artists already have a connection with Lybster and its surrounding area, having spent time in residency at North Lands Creative Glass, and we hope the work will build upon this relationship, tying together landscape, people, and object. In this way the creative output of their work not only incubuses the residents of Lybster’s reflection of their surroundings, but also that of the outsider, intertwining their instinctive association with place and identity.

The work produced will then be shown as part of an interactive installation. The audience will be invited to handle the work produced, triggering the original memories that formed the work, projecting into the gallery space. The work will then be returned to Lybster and shown to the people who participated, allowing new associations and interpretation of the relationships that underpin the community, both on a local and national scale.

Burke, M. Shingleton, D. Speed, C. Hudson-Smith, A. Karpovich, A. O’Callaghan, S. Simpson, M. Barthel, R. Blundell, B. De Jode, M. Leder, K Lee, C. Macdonald, J.

Abstract

Many people associate tagging with negative situations, for example, to track “criminals” or to track journeys and locations. RFID and other forms of near field tagging are being adopted for logistical purposes by commercial industries and governments alike and the UK public remain fearful of the implications of a tagging culture. This paper reflects upon the extent of “tagging culture” fears and identifies them as a significant problem that is preventing widespread public acceptance of the technology and hampering its social, economic and technical benefits.

As a form of recovery for this dire situation, the authors present information concerning an EPSRC project that uses a fresh tactic to encourage the public to actively use tagging technologies themselves and to reap the benefits. TOTeM (Tales of Things and Electronic Memory) is a three-year funded pan-UK project that focuses on the archiving of people’s memories associated with specific objects. Through the technical development of simple interfaces aimed at the home user, people are encouraged to tell a story about an object, to record the associated memory and to ‘tag’ their object in a unique way that will always associate their memory with their artefact.

1. Introduction

This paper aims to present a brief outline of issues concerning current “tagging culture”. This is achieved in three ways. Firstly, we consider the perceived “threats” around tagging; secondly, we identify the opportunities offered by the Internet and new mobile technologies and thirdly, we present an outline of the TOTeM Project. This section touches on the technical implications of the research and the paper concludes with a wider consideration of the societal impact of the work.

2. Threats

Information and communication technologies have expanded traditional physical space, through the creation of “virtual communication” spaces. The deliberate linkage of the physical world with the virtual world through RFID tags and sensors, has led to“permeability” between the public and private contexts [1]. One of the leading debates surrounding privacy in a ubiquitous Internet of Things hinges upon an individual’s ability to control the blurring boundary between the public and private spheres, and to determine who can access his/her private sphere and under what conditions [2]. Whilst RFID and other forms of near field tagging are being adopted for logistical purposes by commercial industries and governments alike, the UK public remain fearful of the implications of a tagging culture. Apart from the use of tagging systems to support necessary ‘access’ to travel networks such as the London Underground (the Oyster card), through toll gates and getting in and out of the country (UK passports), people associate the technology with surveillance and the fear of being ‘tracked’.

A contemporary example of such a fear is manifested in the British public’s concerns over the reintroduction of a national identity card. An identity card hasn’t been in place in the UK since the 1950s [3]. Used after the end of WWII by the police, who became accustomed to the idea of demanding the card, its use was finally ruled unlawful in 1953 by the High Court [4]. As a consequence of the draconian experiences associated with ID cards, there is a significant proportion of the population that is concerned about a new card that is connected to the Internet via a built-in RFID tag.

In contrast, Estonia, touted as one of Central Europe’s most advanced and technically aware nations, is issuing its 1.4 million citizens with an “EstEID”, a chip-based ID card that carries the citizen’s name, address, date and place of birth, digital certificates and email. The card will be valid for travelling to most European countries and for electronic payments, filing tax documents, banking and access to e-government services [5].

Another source of concern is the possible misuse of biometric passports and ID cards. Potential dangers associated with electronic identification include, for example, identity theft and illegitimate tracking. These applications of emerging technologies have fostered debate on the trade-offs between national security and personal privacy. In recent years, the fear of terrorism has made the collection of personal identification, profiling and data mining a matter of national policy, prompting increased interest of government agencies in tracking and tagging technologies. However, as the UK public get closer to the government’s date for the introduction of a compulsory biometric national ID card, there is an increasing need for a strategy that communicates the benefits of tagging.

3. Opportunities

The term ‘Internet of Things’ refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and every device is connected in some way to the Internet [6]. The specific term ‘things’ refers to the concept that every new object manufactured will also be able to be a part of this extended Internet, because it will have been tagged and indexed by the manufacturer during production. It is also envisaged that consumers will have the ability to ‘read’ the tags through the use of mobile ‘readers’ and use the information connected to the object, to inform their purchase, use and disposal of an object.

The implications for the Internet of Things upon production and consumption are tremendous, and will transform the way in which people shop, store and share products [7]. The analogue bar code that has for so long been a dumb encrypted reference to a shop’s inventory system will be superseded by an open platform in which every object manufactured will be able to be tracked from cradle to grave, through manufacturer to distributor, to potentially every single person who comes in to contact with it following its purchase. Further still, every object that comes close to another object, and is within range of a reader, could also be logged on a database and used to find correlations between owners and applications. In a world that has relied upon a linear chain of supply and demand between manufacturer and consumer via high street shop, the Internet of Things has the potential to transform how we will treat objects, care about their origin and use them to find other objects. If every new object is within reach of a reader, everything is searchable and findable, subsequently the shopping experience may never be the same, and the concept of throwing away objects may become a thing of the past as other people find new uses for old things.

4. Bridging the gap: The TOTeM project

A research project has been initiated that aims to nurture support for tagging and ameliorate the rupture between the public perception of tagging as a threat and the recognition of the opportunities for RFID.

The project identifies that the primary intended use of RFID technologies is for the tagging of new objects by industry and the building of database by governments. TOTeM recognises that there is currently limited opportunity for the public to take part in the tagging process, and such an opportunity may offer them insight into the benefits of an Internet of Things. In order to find an appropriate subject worthy of becoming involved in a tagging process, the TOTeM project is concerned with the recording of personal memories associated with objects.

It has been suggested that, in the course of their lives, people surround themselves with between 1,000 and 5,000 objects. Of those thousands of objects, many are probably not truly cared for and end up in rubbish bins or in storage. But for every owner, in almost every household, there are objects that hold significant resonance, and will already connect them to an Internet of memory and meaning. We don’t just see or consume these objects – we experience them, either in memory or as key elements of identity itself [9]. An intrinsic human trait is the process of imbuing meaning onto objects so that they provide connections to people, events and environments. As objects are instilled with memories they take on secondary meanings and are transformed from a technological system towards a cultural system [10] whose experience over time transforms our internal and external world [11]. Artefacts across a mantelpiece become conduits between events that happened in the past, to people who will occupy the future. These objects become essential coordinates across families and communities to support the telling of stories and passing-on of knowledge. TOTeM has the capacity to alter the public fear of tagging by allowing individuals to become familiar with the technology in a way that is socially inclusive across generations.

Central to the process of adding stories to objects is the rise of Web 2.0 technologies and Cloud Computing from an underground movement to the driving force behind many Internet communications and data collection techniques. The term is adapted from O’Reilly Media in 2004 to summarise the rise of services from web-based communities focusing on technologies of social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, Wikis and RSS/XML feeds [8]. Add into this mix the ability to tag, provide and embed objects with memory and you have the potential to change the social and economic value of real world objects. To borrow a term relating to geographic information, the ‘MashUp’ is changing our information landscape. By linking objects to people’s memories we propose to ‘MashUp’ data existing in systems such as YouTube with the real world. Creating a real-world link to memories has the potential to change the value of any object which becomes part of the TOTeM project.

The first objective of the project is to develop a platform to allow personal memories to be attached to objects that already exist in the world. Object elicitation (a technique based on photo-elicitation used in visual sociology) will be used to encourage people to evoke memories that are associated with particular artefacts. These will be collected on an online video database and project participants will then be able to attach a customised tag to their object which, when read by the appropriate device, will automate a direct link to their video space. Through this we will explore existing notions of value that objects hold within society and provide a means to extend their value as they re-enter our economic system. The collected material will provide a rich resource for online ethnographies that explore our relationship to objects, the stories they represent in our lives and reflect upon our current value systems.

5. Conclusion

By providing a mechanism to secure memories linked to an object, we envisage the emergence of a fresh perspective upon the culture of tagging. TOTeM will empower the public with an opportunity to tag things for themselves and contribute to the construction of databases that have a qualitative dimension in which people’s identities remain highly personal.

This has notable societal impacts, which we are suggesting takes a different approach to anything that has gone before in terms of object tagging. Benefits are therefore intergenerational, reaching out across social and industrial communities. TOTeM supports diversity of culture and it positions knowledge and relationships as value systems in their own right. As such, TOTeM will impact academics, professionals, researchers and policy makers dealing with issues relating to the digital economy in the UK and internationally. In the wider business context, the work will ensure that capabilities developed within the digital economy are able to be embedded within business and user practices. This is TOTeM, Tales of Things: Electronic Memory. In these ways and through this project we will all be to “Stop Worrying and Love Tagging!”

References

1. Geser, H. (2002) Sociology of the Mobile Phone, Zurich: University of Zurich

2. Stalder, F. (2002) The Voiding of Privacy, Sociologcal Research Online, Vol 7, No 2 [online] Available http://felix.openflows.com/html/FS_Voiding_of_privacy.pdf [date accessed: 26 April 2007]

3. Agar J. (2005) Identity cards in Britain: past experience and policy implications History and Policy [online] Available http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-33.html [date accessed: 10 November 2009]

4. Privacy International (1996) Identity Cards: Frequently Asked Questions. [online] Available http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-61881&als[theme]=National [date accessed: 10 November 2009]

5. CardTechonlogy (no date) Going Global with National I.D. [online] Available: http://www.cardtechnology.com/article.html?id=20050601WPKKVIM8 [date accessed: 24 April 2007]

6. Greenfield, A. (2006) Everyware, The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, Berkley: New Riders

7. Landt, J. (2001) Shrouds of Time: The History of RFID, Pittsburgh: AIM
Publications

8. Graham, P. (2007). Web 2.0, [online] http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html, [date accessed: 19th January 2009]

9. Proust, M. (1927) cited in Kwint, M., Breward, C., Aynsley, J., (1999) Material Memories, Design and Evocation. Oxford: Berg

10. Baudrillard, J. (1996) System of Objects. London: Verso

11. Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. London: Free Association Books Ltd.

Appadurai proposes that the circulation of commodities in social life can be summarised in the follow way.  ‘Economic exchange creates value.  Value is embodied in commodities that are exchanged.  Focusing on things that are exchanged, rather than simply on the forms or functions of exchange, makes it possible to argue that what creates the link between exchange and value is politics.’ (1986, p.3)   Since Marx and the early political economists, there has been little mystery about the relationship between politics and the production of commodities.  Economic models drive forward consumption, where goods follow the traditional teleology of cradle to grave.  This paper poses the question: what economies are created if memory, not politics, becomes the link between exchange and value?

Proust states that ‘consumer goods aren’t really consumed at all – but experienced, either in memory or right now, as key elements of identity itself’ (1927 cited in Kwint, et al., 1999, p.xiii).  In western traditions, objects serve memory in three main ways.  Firstly they furnish recollection; they constitute our picture of the past.  Secondly, objects stimulate remembering, not only through the deployed mnemonics of public monuments or mantelpiece souvenirs, but also by the serendipitous encounter bringing back experience which otherwise would have remained dormant, repressed or forgotten.  Thirdly, objects form records: analogues to living memory, storing information beyond individual experience (Kwint, et al., 1999, p.2).

It is clear that memories are intrinsically linked with objects; time and memory are embodied or encoded in our perception of everyday things.  Draaisma refers to memories as a ‘store of precious items’ (2000, p.2) and like objects they too have a lifetime, part of a persons own cradle to grave cycle.  The advancement of technology from development of writing surfaces, to photography and cinematography, Edison’s phonograph and now a days numerous ‘artificial’ memories assist us in ‘arming ourselves against the transience implicit in the mortality of memory’ (Draaisma, 2000, p.2) by recording what the eye and ear take in.

This paper examines whether the latest advancement of tagging technologies in the manufacturing process, designed to streamline economic supply chains, can unexpectedly become a new platform for memory storage and transform inert objects into vessels that allow for the imprint of experience to be shared over time.  Is this the moment where objects move beyond the material value to their owner, or the corporation that built them, and instead become desirable artefacts that challenge our ideas of value in this consumer society?

References

Appadurai, A., (1986). Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In  A. Appadurai, ed. The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 1.

Kwint, M., Breward, C., Aynsley, J., (1999) Material Memories, Design and Evocation. Oxford: Berg

Draaisma, D., (2000) Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas About the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

By having this ability to include anything to Marc Weisers view of anywhere, anytime, always-on communications we add another layer of technology to our environments, one that has the ability to deal with the notion of Place as well as Time and Space.

Malcolm McCullough notes that Places are defined less by unique locations, landscape, and communities than by the focusing of experiences and intention onto particular settings.  Whilst we can speak of the identity of a place, we must also admit identification with place. Place is as much about subjective insideness as objective boundaries.  Physical boundaries may just as easily be the cause or the effect of social and cultural memberships. Spaces lies outside the walls, or outside the social sphere, but the experiences of place, occur inside these seen and unseen boundaries.

Like architecture, interaction design affects how each of us inhabits the physical world.  The internet, and now the internet of things, presents a huge shift from a single home toward a cultural connection with multiple nonhome places.  As our environment offers the possibility for meaningful responses, new forms of interaction occur, and we create truly ubiquitous environments; now we can merge the physical word with the digital world, and our environment becomes a conduit of information transfer between people to people. people to things, and things themselves.

Immersed in a ubiquitous environment saturated with RFID tags and readers, do humans and objects simply become blank fields in a database, waiting to be filled in? ‘RFID is a strange space’, since it’s use will lead to three results: ‘there will be no more public space; there will be no more memory loss and there will be no more people, just dataclouds’. Kranenburg, Rob van (Mediamatic conference 2006)

Geser, H (2002) Sociology of the Mobile Phone, Zurich: University of Zurich

Stalder, Felix (2002) “The voiding of Privacy”, Sociological Research Online, Vol 7, No 2 [online] Available http://felix.openflows.com/html/FS_Voiding_of_privacy.pdf [date accessed: 23 September 2009]

Bohn J, Coroama V, Langheinrich M, Mattern F & Rohs M (2004) Social, Economic and Ethical Implications of Ambient Intelligence and Ubiquitous Computing, Institute for Pervasive Computing, ETH: Zurich

Baudrillard (1996) romanticised that ‘We may dream of arriving at an exhaustive description of technemes and their semantic relations that would cover the entire world of objects, but this inevitably remain just that – a dream.’ However with the advent near-field communications, and a global database of things, it’s possible for us to create an interface that maps his view of objects and our memories.

Baudrillard, Jean (1996) The System of Objects (translated by Benedict, James), Verso London