Research into RFID and the Internet of Things

The Memorable: Applying the Internet of Things to small communities
Shingleton, D., Sutherland, K.
Edinburgh College of Art

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
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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