Joe Lamantia.com

The Internet of Things - Or The Internet of Whens?

I just requested a copy of The Internet of Things pamphlet by Rob van Kranenberg from the Network Notebooks series (by networkcultures.org / Geert Lovink - who's basically around the corner now that I'm here in Amsterdam). In combination with a read through Everyware, it's got me thinking about some of the basic assumptions we're relying on to frame the future of computing as it impacts our lives.

One of the key enablers underlying The Internet of Things is the IPv6 standard, whose address scheme has an unbelievable range of possible addresses - 2 to the 128th power - so many that attempts to make it comprehensible by analogy strain the boundaries of the absurd.

All of these comparisons beg the essential question of what exactly we will be addressing. So far, the general class of objects 'Things' is the most likely that I've heard posited. All of more specific suggestions - such as all the grains of sand in the world, or every plant in every farm field on the planet - remain in the category of the simply fanciful.

I think this focus on objects as the dominant type of addressed node in the new network lacks imagination. [At the IFTF suggests the Internet of Verbs]

The theory of relativity unified space and time, so why not use IPV6 to address moments of time as well as huge collections of things?

Massive cloud storage arrays and ultra-wide-band data transfer infrastructures may make it feasible to record the cumulative sensory experiences of entire human lives, or groups of people, or whole crowds; why not give each discrete femtosecond slice of these aggregate experiences an address for easy archiving, retrieval, and manipulation?

Going back 13 billion years to the beginning of the universe would give us The Internet of Whens.

Mapping every decision made by people during the course of their day (200 on food alone), or their life, would give us The Internet of Whys.

Labelling all the locations in the four-dimensional coordinate scheme would create The Internet of Wheres.

Addressing all the cells in all the human bodies would result in The Internet of Whos.

We must be better attuned to the possibilities afforded by all this 'space' we're giving ourselves to play with.

local tags: everyware, internet_of_things, ipv6, relativity, space_time, spime, ubicomp, ubiquitous_computing