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The Meaning of Objects in an Internet-of-Things World

Johan Criel(Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs - Intec, University of Ghent, Belgium)

Laurence Claeys(Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs - MICT, University of Ghent, Belgium)

EASST 20103 September 2010

Looking for

We are looking what STS theories could learn us:– About the composition and position of objects in

an Internet-of-Things World and

– How we should implement objects in Internet-of-Things applications

Internet-of-Things, Web of Things, Physical Web, Ubiquitous computing

Many names for one phenomena

memory objects

connected objects and devices

media objectssmart homes

Internet-of-Things (IoT)

The term, ‘Internet of things’, refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves towards a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and every device is connected in some way to the Internet.

The specific reference to ‘things’ refers to the concept that every new object manufactured will also be able to part of this extended Internet, because they will have been tagged and indexed by the manufacturerduring production.

It is also envisaged that consumers will have the ability to ‘read’ the tagsthrough the use of mobile ‘readers’ and use the information connected to the object, to inform their purchase, use and disposal of an object.

ITU vision on IoT• Origins from “Challenges to the network”• “From anytime, any place connectivity for

anyone, we will now have connectivity for anything”

Minaturisation towards the Internet of Things(ITU, 2005)

IoT objects, Smart objects, Things that talk,

Virtual Objects, Spimes, blogjects

“Blogjects are objects that blog”(Julian Bleeker)

“Spimes are manufactured objects whose informational support is so overwhelmingly extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system. Spimes begin and end as data. They’re virtual objects first and actual objects second.”Bruce Sterling, Shaping Things, (2005).

The Evolution in the usage of IoTobjects

IoT objects can be identified and tracked

IoT objects can sense

IoT objects can act

IoT Objects can be identified and tracked

IoT Objects can be identified and tracked by endusers

IoT objects can sense

sensing car

twittering plantsensing shoe

sensing clothing

sensing tracked products

Where is the sensor?

The human is the sensor

Personal informatics

Ian Li(http://www.personalinformatics.org)

Personal informatics is a class of tools that help people collect personally relevant information for the purpose of self-reflection and self-monitoring.

These tools help people gain self-knowledge about one's behaviors, habits, and thoughts.

IoT objects can act

IoT object definition in our work

“An IoT object is every artifact that can be found with a search engine (is connected to the internet)”

Some unanswered questions we are struggeling with

• The way users could define their own IoT objects and applications?

• The way of sharing IoT objects and applications between users? andtheir re-use (for different applications)?

• The searching of the IoT environment using IoT objects?

www.dyse.org

First integration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMVZIc_MWh8

IoT model example

henhouse

The number of chickens inside

The number of breaders inside

The number of eggs inside

Fox attack (event)

0

2

4

6

8

10

M o Wedn F ri Su

M y eggsM y neighbo urs eggs

• What is the average time between two laid eggs?

• Alert me when I have more then two breeders and when there is a fox attack

Egg laid (event)

The context model we work with

The model of the IoT world

a person

a sensor

an objecta space

mobile internet

What we can learn about objects

What is the composition and position of an IoT object in the world?

What is the composition and position of an object in the world?

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

Don Ihde (1934) Bruno Latour(1947)

LC1

Slide 20

LC1 die vraag in het kader moet geherformuleerd wordenLaurence Claeys; 25/08/2010

What we can learn about objects

Graham Harman (1968)

Object-Oriented Philosophy

Objects in the work of Heidegger• Hermeneutic philosophy

• dasein (being-in-the-world) - entschlossene (things)

• Die Technik und die Kehre (1953) & Being und Zeit (tool analysis) (1927)

• Objects are reduced to how they are manifested in humanconsciousness

• objects can be present-at-hand (vorhandenheit) or ready-to-hand (zuhandenheit)

• objects and things

"The essence of Dasein lies in its existence. Accordingly those characteristics which can be exhibited in this entity are not 'properties' present-at-hand of some entity which 'looks' so and so and is itself present-at-hand; there are in each case possible ways for it to be, and no more than that...So when we designate this entity with the term 'Dasein', we are expressing not it's 'what' (as if it were a table, house, or tree) but its Being." (translated by: Inwood, 1997: 23).

Objects in the work of Heidegger

Entities only gain significance from their full context, since a knife is not the same thing in a kitchen, a theatrical drama or the hand of a criminal. ‘Equipment—in accordance with its equipmentality—always is in terms of its belonging to other equipment: ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room’ (Heidegger, 1962).

How we ‘translated’ what we learned from Heidegger in our model

• Entities do not have fixed properties

• People can attach meaning to properties of an objectdepending on what they want to use it for

• People know every moment (or can ask everymoment) what smart behavior is active (final control)

Objects in the work of Don Ihde• Original discipline: phenomenology• Later: postphenomology / phenomenological

pragmatism

• Central emphasis on relations and on extended embodiment

• Sliding scale of symmetry between humans and objects • Interrelations between humans and environments are

central

• Technology and the Lifeworld. From Garden to Earth (1990)

"the various ways in which I-as-body interact with my environment by means of technologies" (Ihde, 1990: 72)

The role of technology in the work of Don Idhe

human

technology

world

)( )( /- )(-( ) -

Embodiment relation

-

Hermeneuticrelation

Backgroundrelation

Alterity relation

Technological mediation creation

reduction

amplification

How we ‘translated’ what we learned from Ihde in our model

• People can also be IoT objects

• Every augmentation of a ‘dumb artifact’ to become an IoT object brings transformation (reduction and amplification)

Objects in the work of Bruno Latour

• The world is a field of objects or actants locked in trials of strength

• Everything is immanent in the world

• Nothing exist but actants, and all of them are utterly concrete

• For Latour an actant is always an event, and events are alwayscompletely specific: “everything happens only once, and at one place”

• An actant is its relations

• Quasi-objects (hybrids) are ontological primair to objects and subjects

• The link between actors always requires translation

What can we learn from Latour for our work?

What can we learn from Latour?

• Does every entity only exists as an event?how can we implement this?

• Are IoT objects hybrids (quasi-objects) that are a nightmare for any attempt to slice the world cleanly into purified districts? or just not, are virtual objects and physical objects two different districts?

“Entities are events, inconceivable in isolation from networks”“They are not isolated points of essense that endure through space and time, but more like trajectories” (We have never been Modern, pg. 81-87)

Some unanswered questions we are struggeling with

• The way users could define their own IoT objects and applications?

• The way of sharing IoT objects and applications between users? andtheir re-use (for different applications)?

• The searching of the IoT environment using IoT objects?

www.dyse.org