Why Pigeons That Blog Matter?
Ever since this "Blogjects" topic has started circulating, I've been asked lots of things, but two questions have come to the fore. First, why would objects want to just blog? Second, why would I care if objects "blog"?
"What does this all mean? Whereas once the pigeon was an urban varmint whose value as a participant in the larger social collective was practically nil or worse, the Pigeon that Blogs now attains first-class citizen status. Their importance quickly shifts from common nuisance and a disgusting menace, to a participant in life and death discussions about the state of the micro-local environment. Pigeons that blog and tell us about the quality of the air we breath are the Web 2.0 progeny of the Canary in the Coal Mine."
I've been working on an essay that addresses these questions as part of a report that Nicolas and I are preparing as a result of the Blogject Workshop we held at Lift06. The basic idea is to enlarge the assumptions about the Internet of Things beyond just a world of Arphids and telematics. The import of the Internet of Things is much larger and the stakes much higher, particularly for occupants of the physical world such as us reading this — that "us" is humans. (Google bots reading this already have anticipated the worldly change that is occurring as the ubiquitous Internet pervades and leaks into physical space.)
The Internet of Things — it's like Web 2.0 for the world's other tenants.