Group items tagged

I selected a name I found interesting in the reading, Ben Benjamin. His website "superbad" launched in 1997 takes participants down a spiral of bazar, unrelated, flashing, digital art loops. Like the article "A History of Internet Art" mentioned, "beware that, seen out of their native HTML, out of their networked, social habitats, they are the net.art equivalents of animals in zoos." So I went to see what one of the mentioned artists work was all about. As the article mentions Ben Benjamin's work was featured in the Whitney Museum Biennial in 2000. Wikipedia also informed me he won a Webby award in 1999. "Superbad." Superbad. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.

This article lays out a semi-realistic landscape of the closer future of the internet of things. The provided infographic is a barrage corporate logos separated into sections of lifestyle and platforms. The image itself is a little disturbing, putting into mind a close future surrounded by a cloud of companies, infiltrating our homes with even more information invading our privacy. That being said I liked this article in particular because it did not have a cynical view of the internet of things and did not suggest we judge the validity of the technology on the worst case scenario. I think it's important to be paranoid, but not so much as to stall progress. Turck, Matt. "Making Sense Of The Internet Of Things" Tech Crunch. May 35, 2013. Accessed March 19, 2014. http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/25/making-sense-of-the-internet-of-things/

A few thoughts --the infographic begs for better design, so too the implementation of IoT? Perhaps pronoiac view is happy medium to achieve here ---- Progressive paranoia, or "pronoia" was an outlook popularized amongst cybernetic countercultures of the 1990s. General concept was that "universe is conspiring on your behalf"

An interesting case of design fiction where they have actually programmed a washer to be connected to a smartphone through the cloud so that you may control changes from you phone as well as receive notifications. What they have done which I find interesting is that they have made this video as a way to "start a conversation" about this instance of design fiction. Unlike some design fiction they are not claiming to know what the future will look like or pretend like they have already created the product and worked out all of the bugs. Their approach to design fiction is very simplistic and honest. ""Cloudwash is a prototype connected washing machine. We prototype products at Berg to help us understand how our platform should work, and to encourage better design in connected things…" BERG, "Berg Case Studies/ Cloudwash." Accessed March 20, 2014. http://bergcloud.com/case-studies/cloudwash/.

This short essay by Julian Bleeker talks about exactly what is insinuated in the title design, science, fact, and fiction, and how all of these components come together in order to form what we know as design fiction. This short essay is not very short but there are a lot of interesting points and picture about how and why design fiction functions. Bleeker, Julian. Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact, and Fiction. http://drbfw5wfjlxon.cloudfront.net/writing/DesignFiction_WebEdition.pdf (accessed March 20, 2014).

Here is another article dealing with the questions I posed in my last post. This one is by Bruce Schneier, who, if I am correct, is a friend and colleague of Bruce Sterling. Schneier seems to be an expert on digital security and he goes over a lot of interesting points regarding security with the internet of things. Schneier, Bruce. "The Internet of Things Is Wildly Insecure - And Often Unpatchable" Wired. January 6, 2014 http://www.wired.com/opinion/2014/01/theres-no-good-way-to-patch-the-internet-of-things-and-thats-a-huge-problem/

I wonder what opportunities for "electronic civil disobedience" might be uncovered in the IoT landscape?

In Bruce Sterling's excerpts from Shaping things, I kind of felt like he didn't spend enough time talking about privacy or security in a world of things that are always on and connected. So after searching "spimes" with keywords like "security", I found this article on an online magazine called "Government Technology" (of course). But the article did bring up some valid points about security regarding the "internet of things". My only question is how do we maintain privacy in a secure world of the "internet of things. Is it possible to have both? The idea of spumes is exciting and there is no denying the positive potential, but what do we have to sacrifice for convenience? Lohrmann, Dan. "Can We Secure the Internet of Things?" Government Technology. February 25, 2014 http://www.govtech.com/security/Can-We-Secure-the-Internet-of-Things.html

Here's a collection of the NSA slides, revealed by Edward Snowden by way of the Guardian news. The slides detail the various pervasive and invasive methods of surveillance, tapping into phone and social media networks, as orchestrated by the National Security Agency. This is the internet-of-things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. Also, as discussed in class, the layout and design of these slides is often horrendous, complicating or obstructing clear communication of information. "NSA Prism program slides" The Guardian News. Published Friday 1 November 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/prism-slides-nsa-document. Accessed April 6, 2014

My research paper will be dealing with The Internet of things. Specifically, I am interested in the many obstacles in the way of everything actually becoming connected to the Internet. "7 Big Problems with the Internet of Things" takes a skeptical and realistic look at-you guessed it-seven of these obstacles. 1. The first problem is the many new security challenges that will be created. Getting a computer virus is bad enough, but giving hackers and criminals access to everything in your daily life is a whole other ballgame. 2. Another issue is that with the increasing amount of incoming data, it will be more and more challenging for businesses to perform their normal processes because of availability requirements. 3. The next issue, which many skeptics are worried about, is privacy. This one is linked to the security issue and already is becoming a problem with connected devices today. 4. Data storage is something that has already become an issue for large Internet companies like Google and Facebook. If everything is connected to the Internet, where will we store all of that data and can the existing infrastructure even handle that kind of overload? 5. Making all of this extra data available to everyone all of the time is a data management problem that may be hard to navigate. 6. Businesses that are managing data from a multitude of devices will have to significantly upgrade their server technologies. 7. Storing data at a single location will probably not be possible. Bandwidth requirements will exceed existing data centers. Though the article didn't cover all of the issues, it provided a good list of issues for me to look into as I move forward with my paper. Roe, David. "7 Big Problems with the Internet of Things" CMS Wire. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/internet-of-things/7-big-problems-with-the-internet-of-things-024571.php?pageNum=2

"Do we need an Internet of Things? Or, when your fridge gets on your nerves" Brings up a really interesting and valid point about the Internet of Things (IOT). Will it be truly useful to have everything connected to the Internet? For many of the proposed IOT products, there are real world solutions that we don't need to be tapped into the Internet for. Matthias Poppei thinks, "…it's time to distinguish between an 'Internet of Things' and an 'Internet of useful Things'." I for one couldn't agree more. I do think that the IOT will create some really useful and life-changing opportunities in areas like healthcare and energy, but I also think that a lot of tech businesses are gearing up to take advantage of the hype of it all. Consumer beware: how useful will these products be? Poppel, Matthias. "Do we need an Internet of Things? Or, when your fridge gets on your nerves"ECN. http://www.ecnmag.com/blogs/2013/10/do-we-need-internet-things-or-when-your-fridge-gets-your-nerves