Monday, 24 October 2011

Would you like any toast?

So I'll be the first to admit I was pretty impressed and extremely interested in yesterdays lecture. I had never known of the concept of 'The Internet of Things,' and although like many I had always thought that computers might one day take over the world....I never imagined it happening like this. Bleeker in his article Why Things Matter describes the internet of things as 'a nascent conceptual framework for understanding how physical objects, once networked and imbued with informatic capabilities, will occupy space and occupy themselves in a world in which things were once quite passive.' So does that mean that objects will be given a voice in the world and be able to communicate through the internet? Pretty much.

What interested me in particular was Rfid tags. In some cases they look like this:

Now I only just realised that I've seen these plenty of times inside DVD movie cases and on numerous other products, but I had no idea what they were. Now I understand what they are and how they work. For those who don't here is a little diagram.



Basically a radio signal is sent to the RFID Tag, of which specific data on the tag is returned via the signal and goes into a reader and is uploaded to the network and onto a computer. Pretty cool right?? Now imagine if every object was like a RFID Tag and could communicate to a network much like a social media network. Your car, house, fridge, TV, mobile phone etc could upload information and begin communicating on the internet. The Ericcson video showed in the lecture really opens your eyes to the possibilities and although they may be a long way off, it still illustrates what things make be like in the future. On the other hand the short clip from the minority report shows how organisations can use this to advertise and market to certain consumers, showing a rather negative impact on such an interesting concept.

I thought I'd leave you with a short clip from one of my favourite TV shows Red Dwarf. Just a bit of light British humour to finish off my blogs, but it still provides an idea of what objects might be like in the future. Thanks for reading and commenting on my blogs. All the best!!


Sources: Bleecker, J. (2006) 'Why Things Matter: A Manifesto for networked objects'

5 comments:

  1. So much respect for you right now for working Red Dwarf into that post!

    Also, cheers for explaining how RFID tags work - I too have seen them around but never really thought what they were. I found this article that ties in the topics of hackers and the internet of 'things' - scary stuff.

    http://agsgo.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/rfid-in-your-wallet-on-your-shirt-i-bet-you-didnt-know/

    Until I read this, the thought of hackers accessing the information generated by RFIDs had not even crossed my mind. This also goes for companies handing out discount cards with RFIDs in them! Perhaps there needs to be some kind of ethics committee that controls this.

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  2. The Eriksson video was definitely an eye opener for me too and I thought that someday media electronics would take over the world, such as in iRobot. But this topic has also shown me how far we have come in our technological advancements. In the same way that Mark Zuckerberg did not intend Facebook to be used the way it is, many electronics and internet sites aren't used the way they were intended for either. It just shows how far we've come and how far we can still go.

    Thanks for all your educating blogs Aaron.

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  3. I loved the Sony Ericcson video but it is really quite a scary thing. We all think about technology taking over the world and little chips being installed in our brains but by the looks of it it may be just around the corner.

    Thanks also for explaining the RFID tags. Like yourself and Tegan I had seen them but always ripped them off my dvd covers (well attempted to anyway) but never understood what their purpose was.

    I wonder if any new laws would be bought in or security changes in order to accommodate for these new potential technologies and hackers!.. All a scary thought!

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  4. Like Dimity, thinking about that video got me a thinking about iRobot, which got me thinking about the new Siri program on iOS5. Siri seems like an advanced digital assistant, but in reality it's just a very very cleverly built organisational tool. It's as close as you're gonna get to artificial intelligence, without being artificial intelligence.

    The video in the lecture showed computers thinking and reasoning of their own accord. Which is a scary thought really.

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  5. I also was very interested with this weeks topic and lecture! I used to find myself so often saying I wish I had some sort of super power to turn something on that was at the other side of the room. (lazy I know). And I think that is what the internet of things will bring to society. Yes whoever creates this idea is a genius but I feel technology is getting so much power in the world.

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