Locative Media and Responsive Environments
Ainda sobre o tema do post anterior, alguns links interessantes sobre a questão. Destaco aqui dois tópicos: o da internet das coisas e dos ambientes inteligentes. Para todos os pontos em destaque, vejam a íntegra do post.
“Internet of Things
Bruce Sterling:
- Shaping Things (.pdf) — A pdf copy of Sterling’s 2005 book wherein he describes the concept of the spime. From the product description: ‘The future will see a new kind of object—we have the primitive forms of them now in our pockets and briefcases: user-alterable, baroquely multi-featured, and programmable—that will be sustainable, enhanceable, and uniquely identifiable. Sterling coins the term ‘spime’ for them, these future manufactured objects with informational support so extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system. Spimes are designed on screens, fabricated by digital means, and precisely tracked through space and time. They are made of substances that can be folded back into the production stream of future spimes, challenging all of us to become involved in their production. Spimes are coming, says Sterling. We will need these objects in order to live; we won’t be able to surrender their advantages without awful consequences.’
- Spimes and the Future of Artifacts (video presentation) — An entertaining 35 minute presentation elaborating on six key technology trends (RFID, GPS, visual search, CAD, rapid prototyping and ‘transparent production’) that are changing the way that we relate to objects. He defines a spime as an object that is ‘plannable, trackable, findable, recyclable, uniquely identified and generates digital histories.’ (5:33)
- Flurb #6: Computer Entertainment (text) — A signature Bruce Sterling rant posing as a lecture given to a 2008 SXSW audience by a time traveler from the year 2043. Representative passage: ‘This is my General Electric Pocket Mediator. This one’s about five years old, it’s a student’s model. Personal mediators are a stable technology in my time, we don’t have to fuss with them much. Unfortunately it doesn’t have full functionality here in 2008, because we don’t have the cloud yet. As soon as I reached here, my Mediator reached out for the cloud to reload its apps and OS… and it tapped into something called ‘Window-Vista.’ Then it just plain gave up. It’s gone completely limp now. There’s nothing left here but this frozen screen-saver pattern.”
Miscellaneous Readings and Resources:
- Four Stages of the Internet of Things — Former Wired editor and all-around whiz Kevin Kelly riffs on this article by Tim Berners-Lee to construct a succinct description of what he thinks ‘the Semantic Web’ or ‘Web 3.0’ is all about. In short, his four stages are: 1) Linking computers, 2) Linking documents, 3) Linking the data in (and about) documents, and 4) Linking things.
- The net shapes up to get physical — Guardian article by Sean Dodson. Good general description. Excerpt: ‘Most people, if they bother to think about it at all, probably view the internet as an agent of profound change. In the 15 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, the life of almost everyone in the industrialised world has been touched by it. But just as many of us are getting to grips with its second stage, the mobile internet, very few are prepared – perhaps even aware – of the third and potentially most revolutionary phase of all: the internet of things.’ (guardian.co.uk)
- RFID — Wikipedia article on RFID tags. Includes many interesting examples.
Responsive Environments
Readings
- How smart does your bed have to be, before you are afraid to go to sleep at night? — Rich Gold critiques the notion of the ‘smart house’ in this hilarious and thought-provoking essay. ‘Can an intelligent house fall in love with the house next door,’ asks Gold. ‘Can they have baby houses? Is an architect a trained ‘womb’ for houses, or more crudely, is an architect how a house makes another house? Does an architect feel like she/he is violating fundamental forces of evolution if she/he does not include the latest new technology in the house she/he next gives birth to? Do you believe in progress? Is a suburban house of today better than a terrace house in London in 1850 which was better than a thatched country cottage in 1700 which was better than the tepees and mud huts that Columbus found in the New World? Is the house that Donald Trump lives in better than the house you live in? If you were an architect and you designed an intelligent house, would the house’s own happiness matter to you? If the couple that bought the house you designed got a divorce, do you think you should be libel for damages?”
- Orchestrating your surroundings — A project proposal for a ‘smart house’ – type environment by by Pau Giner, Carlos Cetina, Joan Fons and Vicente Pelechano.”