Why Things Matter: A Manifesto for Networked Objects

Julian’s paper “A Manifesto for Networked Objects - Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things”, in its simple form also known as “Why Things Matter” has expressed on the issue that in the future, things will matter. It’s about a coming wave of “Blogjects”, in another word, objects that blog. This paper explained two points of blogject. First is the reason of why objects blog and second is the reason why and whether people care about this. The concept of objects that blog has characteristics such as the ability to trace where the object has been, its previous history/encountered experience, then collect and distribute product information followed by how social networks has as much social impact on people in an assertive way. Basically it makes us eventually to rather live “in” the Internet than “on” them instead. Most of all, the reason of how people accept the idea and foresee it to be a success.

 

In the introduction of Julian’s paper, it stated the reasons why he has created the “Blogject” to inform a difference between “things” that connected to the Internet apart from the “things” that actually participate and work within the Internet itself of the social networks. However, Julian’s did not want to simply intro objects which that blog, as how we have now understand what is blogging. Also, he was trying to say that those objects can definitely work like human being, especially those who write blogs, using conversations for communication, network creation and trackback.

From the example given by using real pigeons carrying some electronic devices, it came to my attention that it is trying to talk about the usefulness of a such mash up. Julian uses this similarity to inform us that the pigeons can tell us the freshness of the air we are breathing are the Web 2.0 children of the Canary in the coal mine. This is indeed brilliant.

 

Make everything short and simple to understand, basically there are few important and vital characteristics of “Blogjects”. Blogjects has the function and ability to track and trace the places of where they have been. It works similar like the Foursquare website where it allows you to “check in” into places you are at by using your mobile phone. In this case, your mobile is the Blogject device. It tracks then traces the places you have checked in through the social media website. Furthermore, Blogjects have self-recorded histories of the encounters and experiences. Let’s take Foursquare as an example again, it keeps a record of the all the places you have “checked in” and you can comment on the experience you had at the venue, a restaurant or an entertainment spot perhaps? These experiences can be shared among Foursquare users and all. Moreover, usually Blogjects will have a form of agency which they are able to increase and then take a part in. they have an influential voice within the social web. For example, Foursquare has a big market share in the located base social networking websites’ category.

 

All the Blogjects have the ability to lead to a new world where “objects” or “things” actually matter for cohabitation and participation. Nobody know if all these Blogjects will actually succeed in the transformation that the internet of things is a platform for the world 2.0 or will it actually help to create a better world for us in the future. We can only wait and see to find out what it’s going to be in.

 

Personally, what would I want from the networked world is a better drop on what the actual state of the world is actually impactful. Thus, my uncertainty of trying to portray a world of networked things that aren’t only around to help to deliver simple actions such as delivery packages, but actually are around here to help us to create a global accessible of real time feeds of the social and environmental environment.