Nomad

9 Dec 2011 by Robbie

Interconnectedness in 2012

I noticed with interest earlier this month the news that Berg (Design consultancy) have announced the impending availability of their Little Printer – a small newpaper printer for use in the home. It's going to be based on their Berg Cloud – a system for controlling (smart) products from the Internet.

This is just the latest in a line of products and ideas which are acting as vectors for making the Internet less about chunks of data, and more about how things interact. Where the paradigm was predominately computer and desk based, the advent of mobile technology has gotten people used to having the Internet with them all the time. You hardly hear anyone ask "Are you online?" anymore – the assumption being that everyone is.

What specifically interests me is the fact that everyday objects are becoming more aware. It used to be that the example trotted out at this stage would be a fridge that was "Internet aware" and could order milk before you run out. Whilst these undoubtably exist, they aren't really the level of object that is subtly leading the way. Things like the little printer won't even register as Internet aware for most people – they are just things that perform a function. The Internet is fast becoming less important in people's perception – the same as people don't think about the gas infrastructure or the sewer system. It's just a hidden layer of complexity that provides them services.

We've already seen this merging of the Internet with the everyday with QR codes, which are now used as hyperlinks between offline and online content.

Bruce Stirling, the author, coined the term Spime to describe an object that:

... can be tracked through space and time throughout the lifetime of the object Bruce Stirling

We aren't far off. Adidas have recently released a football shoe for amateur players called the Adizero which features their miCoach technology – which is an update on the Nike+ tracking chip, but the miCoach provides data on a wide range of metrics such as average speed, maximum speed, number of sprints, distance at high intensity levels, steps and stride all via its built in 3D accelerometer.

If you couple this movement towards ubiquitous Internet and more aware objects with the growing number of open source hobbyist electronics and manufacturering projects, such as Arduino and Makerbot, then we are moving towards a very exciting period.

Hopefully the coming year will see both an increase in the number of smart home products and an acceleration of pace of development of new and interesting ideas. Additionally, a bit of spare time so I can hack around with a few of these things wouldn't go amiss :)