Aca-article: Take Me I’m Yours - Mimicking object agency (on IoT)

Through a design demonstration, this paper speculates upon a future context in which objects will begin to talk to us and even give us instructions. The purpose of the research is to anticipate a time when correlations between the data sets that are associated with different objects are found and the objects themselves are used to impart this ‘new’ knowledge back to us.

Authors: Chris Speed and Duncan Shingleton

ABSTRACT - […] Located within the technical and cultural context of the Internet of Things, this paper introduces a lineage for our relationship with objects from 1. Read Only, 2. Read and Write and 3. Read, Write and Act. The paper proceeds to establish the conditions for a third generation of Internet of Things by articulating the nature of networks, their structure and their capacity to support the principles of Actor-Network Theory which may lead to a condition in which objects may take on a form of agency.

The paper further introduces an iPhone App entitled Take Me I’m Yours that operates as a working but speculative design project mimicking the conditions in which objects may talk to us. The designers speculate a design fiction in which object databases may begin to identify associations and propose ‘actions’ to a user. The application and demonstration at UbiComp 2012 will offer delegates an opportunity to experience a sense of what it may feel like in the future when objects may begin telling us what to do.

Open access: http://fields.eca.ac.uk/?p=942