Abstract
This short paper reflects upon the temporal characteristics of the emerging phenomenon known as the Internet of Things. As objects become individually tagged with unique identities through the addition of small electronic chips or bar codes, their history is recorded and made available to others across a network. The advent of this ever-growing catalogue of histories means that every object will be ‘in touch’ with its current and previous owner at all times, and suggests that whilst owners might like to ‘forget’ about an object, we will never truly be detached from them. Such a network presents opportunities for society to reconsider how it disposes of objects and instead consider how we might pass them on to future owners. However the author suggests that current industrial interest in the potential for an Internet of Things is hindered by an adherence to a linear model of time that is more interested in the production and sale of new objects than the histories of the old.
Highlights
This short paper reflects upon the temporal characteristics of the emerging phenomenon known as the Internet of Things
The author suggests that current industrial interest in the potential for an Internet of Things is hindered by an adherence to a linear model of time that is more interested in the production and sale of new objects than the histories of the old
The term, ‘internet of things’, refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and every object is connected in some way to the internet
Summary
The term, ‘internet of things’, refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and every object is connected in some way to the internet. The specific reference to ‘things’ refers to the concept that every new object will be able to part of this extended Internet, because they will have been tagged and indexed by the manufacturer during production. The technology has enabled supermarkets to track the temperature of consignments of prawns from the fishing boat that caught them, to the in-store freezers, to following the life cycle of a product from cradle to grave, shelf to landfill. Tracked and monitored as they move around the world, objects are becoming networked and ‘always-on’ (Greenfield, 2006), a condition that means it will become harder to disassociate an object from its memories
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