"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

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

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/

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

  After reading Alexander Galloway's Countergaming chapter from his book, I wanted to see some examples of artist-made game mods. I Youtubed video game mods and discovered a Youtube channel called 'Vsauce'. Vsauce is run by internet personality Michael Stevens who posts videos that discuss and answer questions about scientific topics, gaming, technology, culture, and more. The video I found about game mods was called Top 7 Video Game Mods: V-LIST #6. As a person that doesn't do a lot of gaming, I found it pretty interesting to see the mods in action. The coolest thing in the video was a guy who is building a working 16bit arithmetic computer. I don't know if it can technically be considered a mod at all, but it is pretty impressive regardless. The implications of stuff like this brings me back to the Galloway reading which ponders the future of video gaming and a as of now unrealized independent gaming movement. "Top 7 Video Game Mods: V-LIST #6 " Posted by Vsauce. Sep 30, 2010. Accessed March 19, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaTsPvyTCLQ

Through the Rhizome website, I found Net.artist, Cornelia Sollfrank. Sollfrank with the help of four other artists, created a program that would comb the internet for content and then assemble it into a sort of collage of text and images. This is the Net.art Generator. It seems to me that the project is a comment on the proliferation of net.art at the time and whether or not certain net.art could even be considered art. The piece also seems to question authorship and appropriation. There is also a link on the site to a video of the generator in an art show somewhere, being used. "A smart artist makes the machine do the work" Sollfrank, Cornelia. Rhizome.org, "The Net.art Generator." Last modified 2011. Accessed February 21, 2014. http://archive.rhizome.org/artbase/33601/. Hasty, Nick. Rhizome, "Rhizome." Last modified 01 17, 2011. Accessed February 21, 2014. http://rhizome.org/.

As I read 'Web Work: A History of Internet Art' by Rachel Greene, I highlighted some of the websites mentioned to go back to and explore. One of these sites was jodi.org. On my first visit to the site, I just typed in Jodi.org in my Chrome browser, which I will warn you right now: DON'T DO IT! I was brought to a blank black page with no information except that my pop up blocker informed me that it blocked a pop up. Being the fool that I am, I changed the setting to allow pop ups from jodi.org, thinking that maybe the pop up was part of the net.art I would find on the page. Immediately a half dozen or so pop ups popped up and started moving around the page, as I tried to close out of the windows they became more and more erratic and finally I just quit Chrome to get out of there. Then I went to Jodi.org throughout the portal of the Wayback Machine. It seemed like another one of those: "rabbit-hole-look-there-are-so-many-fucking-links-all-over-that-move-and-change-colors-and-shit-aren't-we-so-disruptive-type-sites." that Clae was talking about. Then as I was writing this up, in order to give a better description of the site I went to outside of The Wayback Machine, I went back to Jodi.org and a different page came up! Each time I closed the window and went back to Jodi.org, I was directed to a new and different page. It still seems sketchy and I only visited a few more pages, but I thought it was interesting anyways. "Jodi.org." Accessed February 20, 2014. http://jodi.org.

When I was about 11, I got into punk rock. I turned 11 in December of 1996 which happens to also be the first archived website of epitaph.com which was the website for epitaph records. Epitaph records in the 90s was THE punk rock label and I would frequent the website to get information about bands, shows, etc. Epitaph also really tried to push first amendment rights on their website and posted all sorts of links to stuff that was fascinating for an 11 year old kid. I found the anarchist cookbook, a lot of anti government forums and links to adult sites. It was a source of great joy and to find the old website on here brought back a lot of memories.
Unfortunately, the archived version of the site doesn't really work until 2000, which was after they changed the way their site functioned and started cleaning up their act to be taken more seriously. A lot of the links don't work and images are missing. There are some interviews and song samples that do work, which is cool. Overall the site definitely looks and functions like the relic that it is.