Rebranding the Internet of Things
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Paper Submitted to ISEA 2011
Object Geography: The Internet of Things
Duncan Shingleton
Download: Object Geography: The Internet of Things
The emerging phenomenon known as the Internet of Things (IOT) refers to the technical and cultural shift anticipated as society moves towards a ubiquitous form of computing that facilitates the connection of everyday objects and devices to all kinds of networks. The analog bar code that has for so long been a dumb, encrypted reference to a shop’s inventory system will be superseded by an open platform in which every object manufactured will be traceable from producer to distributor, and potentially every single person who comes into contact with it following its purchase. Furthermore, 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.
The Internet of Things creates a link between concrete objects and abstract data, producing a hybrid of physical and electronic spaces that enables communication and interaction between people and things, and things themselves. It is an all-encompassing framework to reflect on and design towards more digital connectivity, a system that is local and global, accessible in real-time from any location. Through item based tagging and identification, the Internet of Things will take ubiquitous computing – anytime and anywhere communications – to the next step in networking: ‘anything communications’. However the Internet of Things is at risk of simply becoming a platform whose primary benefit is to offer improved indexing and tracking of manufactured consumer goods from cradle to grave. Therefore this paper aims to re-contextualize the Internet of Things, and explore theory relating to the attachment of data to an object, and as a result the role objects might have in our networks.
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Remember Me & RememberUs – TOTeM
Following the success of RememberMe’s debut incarnation at FutureEverything 2010, TOTeM and Oxfam are joining forces to roll out the project an Internet of Old things nationally. To celebrate, RememberUs hits the Northern Quarter, hijacking Oxfam Emporium and Oxfam Originals on Oldham Street.
This time the team has set up two shops that act as supernatural portals to the Internet of Things. ‘Let go’ of the memories of your favourite things by attaching YouTube or Audioboo clips on to objects in the Oxfam Emporium, and moments later in the Oxfam Originals shop just down the street, people will ‘pick up’ your memory when it is re-associated with another ‘thing’ that they choose buy.
Abstract submitted to Fibreculture
Emergent Network
Duncan Shingleton
The emerging phenomenon known as the Internet of Things refers to the technical and cultural shift anticipated as society moves towards a ubiquitous form of computing that facilitates the connection of everyday objects and devices to all kinds of networks. The Internet of Things creates a link between concrete objects and abstract data, producing a hybrid of physical and electronic spaces, which enables communication and interaction between people and things, and things themselves. However the Internet of Things, resulting through the convergence of identification and location technologies, is at risk of simply becoming a platform whose primary benefit is to offer improved indexing and tracking of manufactured consumer goods from cradle to grave; through manufacturer to distributor, to potentially every single person who comes in to contact with it following its purchase.
Through the combination of theory relating to Ubiquitous Computing, Human Geography, Actor-Network Theory, Semiotics and Emergence, the author aims to re-contextualise the Internet of Things, arguing how objects endowed with informational shadows can create a new layer of complex relationships that were previously not visible in our networks. Networks will be constructed, destructed and transformed by the pattern of interactions represented by how people to people, people to things, and things themselves are interconnected. As objects are treated like code, the messages they encode will be found in the pattern of social relations being expressed, allowing the Internet of things to provide the meta-data that enables clusters of data to self-organize. The Internet of Things will be the central warehouse and marketplace for all our patterns of mediated behaviour, and instead of those patterns being restricted to the invisible gaze of corporations, people will be able to tap into that pool themselves to create communal maps of all the data online. The data we wish to access will be assembled via the web out of an unthinkable number of isolated decisions created by agents both human and non human.
Remember Me & LettingGo/PickingUp submitted to FutureEverything
Following the success of Remember Me’s debut incarnation at FutureEverything 2010, TOTeM and Oxfam are joining forces to roll out the project an Internet of Old things nationally. To celebrate, LettingGo/PickingUp
hits the Northern Quarter, hijacking Oxfam Emporium and Oxfam Originals on Oldham Street.
This time the team has set up two shops that act as supernatural portals to the Internet of Things. ‘Let go’ of the memories of your favourite things by attaching YouTube or Audioboo clips on to objects in the Oxfam Emporium, and moments later in the Oxfam Originals shop just down the street, people will ‘Pick up’ your memory when it is re-associated with another ‘thing’ that they choose buy.
The RememberMe and LettingGo/PickingUp project is powered by TOTeM tagging technology and uses the www.talesofthings.com website to allow anybody to attach a memory to a thing, and receive a unique printable tag that they can attach to the object.
Take Me I’m Yours submitted to ISEA 2011
Take Me I’m Yours is a third generation Internet of Things (IoT) artwork that evokes ‘actions’. Deployed as an iPhone app that allows users to read a traditional barcode that is associated with everyday consumer items. Upon scanning a code the user is prompted with an action to do something with the artefact: “Give me to your neighbour”, or “Take me to work with you”. Through actions that correspond with ‘real world’ contexts ‘Take Me I’m Yours’ encourages the movement of things through people, places and circumstances to provoke new histories and question the perceived function and value of artefacts. When the Cornflakes packet is browsed at home by a family and it says “Turn me inside out and design your own packet”, the artefact is given a voice that provokes a self-transformative action.
Download: Take Me I’m Yours Proposal
Take Me I’m Yours is a project developed by: Rachel Clarke, Christian Dindler, Daniela Petrelli, Duncan Shingleton, Rachel Charlotte Smith and Chris Speed.
The Take Me I’m Yours artwork was developed during the Heritage Inquiries: A Designerly Approach To Human Values workshop at the DIS 2010 conference in Aarhus.
Abstract submitted to ISEA 2011
Object Geography: The Internet of Things
Duncan Shingleton
The emerging phenomenon known as the Internet of Things refers to the technical and cultural shift anticipated as society moves towards a ubiquitous form of computing that facilitates the connection of everyday objects and devices to all kinds of networks. The Internet of Things creates a link between concrete objects and abstract data, producing a hybrid of physical and electronic spaces, which enables communication and interaction between people and things, and things themselves. However the Internet of Things, resulting through the convergence of identification and location technologies, is at risk of simply becoming a platform whose primary benefit is to offer improved indexing and tracking of manufactured consumer goods from cradle to grave; through manufacturer to distributor, to potentially every single person who comes in to contact with it following its purchase.
Through the combination of digital art practice and theory relating to Human Geography and Actor-Network Theory, the author aims to re-contextualise the Internet of Things, arguing how objects endowed with informational shadows could create a new layer of complex relationships that were previously not visible in our networks. This in turn could allow us to rethink our understanding of the structure and agency of a network, by examining the pattern of interactions represented by how people to people, people to things, and things themselves are connected to one another. Networking objects means we could possibly gain new insights into how we make places, how we organize space and society, how we interact with each other in places and across space and time, and how we make sense of others and ourselves in our locality, region, and world. The Internet of Things may well provide a possible framework that not only allows human agents, but also object agents to play constructive as well as destructive and transformative roles in the social production of space.
MPhil/Phd Transfer Report submitted for Examination
Geography of the Internet of Things:
Objects as agents in the social production of space
The field of human geography focuses on ‘how we make places, how we organize space and society, how we interact with each other in places and across space, and how we make sense of others and ourselves in our locality, region, and world’. In the study of human geography we are constantly reminded of how people shape their world and of how people and places vary across time and space. Places are constantly changing and people are responsible for these changes. People create cultures, values, aesthetics, politics, economics and more, and each of these affects and shapes places (Fouberg, et al. 2010).
Objects already play a unique role in our social networks and have strong ties to identity and memory (Draaisma 2000; Henare et al. 2007; Hoskins 1998; Kwint et al. 1999; Miller 2008; Turkle 2007), space (Baudrillard 1996; Bollas 2009) and value (Appadurai 1986). Within all of these contexts a human agent is required to locate the object within a network and imbue or interpret any agency it might have. Through new technologies being introduced as part of the development in the manufacturing of objects, we can begin to see a technological framework that offers a potential for objects to express their own agency (relating to both Actor-Network Theory and Networked Objects) and become a significant actor in a network.
The thesis will focus on how the technological and cultural shift in ubiquitous computing, known as the Internet of Things, will change our understanding of an object’s role in the composition of a network. Through examining the Internet of Things in combination with Actor-Network Theory and Human Geography, this author will argue how objects that have data shadows will contribute to the social, economic and environmental production of space.
The main research question is:
To what extent can the technological and cultural shift in ubiquitous computing, known as the Internet of Things, provide new insights into how objects that have informational shadows can contribute to the social production of space?
In a more detailed way, the research will also answer the following sub questions:
• How can actors be identified and viewed in the field of the Internet of Things?
• What affect will an Internet of Things have on the structure, agency and pattern of a network?
• If the Internet of Things means a network can be understood as being constructed by people and objects, how does the Internet of Things affect the production of time-space and place?
• How does the Internet of Things allow objects to aid human interpretation of social relationships, and allow objects to produce emergent interpretations of their own?
Download: Transfer Report
Paper published in Research on Education and Media Vol.2
Pervasive Memories, Locative Narratives
Gianni Corino, Duncan Shingleton and Chris Speed
REM – Research on Education and Media
Vol. 2, n. 2, December 2010
Download: Pervasive Memories, Locative Narratives