Archive: August 2nd, 2012

Put the kettle on, make yourself a cup of tea, and settle down to read a couple of thought-provoking pieces about networked devices.

First up, Scott Jenson writes Of Bears, Bats, and Bees: Making Sense of the Internet of Things:

The Internet of Things is a growing, changing meme. Originally it was meant to invoke a giant swarm of cheap computation across the globe but recently has been morphing and blending, even insinuating, into established product concepts.

Secondly, Charles Stross has published an abridged version of a talk he gave back in June called How low (power) can you go?:

The logical end-point of Moore’s Law and Koomey’s Law is a computer for every square metre of land area on this planet — within our lifetimes. And, speaking as a science fiction writer, trying to get my head around the implications of this technology for our lives is giving me a headache. We’ve lived through the personal computing revolution, and the internet, and now the advent of convergent wireless devices — smartphones and tablets. Ubiquitous programmable sensors will, I think, be the next big step, and I wouldn’t be surprised if their impact is as big as all the earlier computing technologies combined.

And I’ll take this opportunity to once again point to one of my favourite pieces on the “Internet of Things” by Russell Davies:

The problem, though, with the Internet Of Things is that it falls apart when it starts to think about people. When big company Internet Of Things thinkers get involved they tend to spawn creepy videos about sleek people in sleek homes living optimised lives full of smart objects. These videos seem to radiate the belief that the purpose of a well-lived life is efficiency. There’s no magic or joy or silliness in it. Just an optimised, efficient existance. Perhaps that’s why the industry persists in inventing the Internet Fridge. It’s top-down design, not based on what people might fancy, but on what technologies companies are already selling.

Fortunately, though, there’s another group of people thinking about the Internet of Things - enthusiasts and inventors who are building their own internet connected things, adding connectivity and intelligence to the world in their own ways.

You can read it on your networked device or you can listen to it on your networked device …while you’re having your cup of tea …in a non-networked cup …with water from a non-networked kettle.