Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

The Internet of Things is a term that keeps popping up in my research and reading as of late. A PDF I finally got around to cracking open on my Kindle, by Julian Bleecker called Why Things Matter, played compliment to a press release from Pepsi on April 27th about their foray into social vending.

Is someone or somebody trying to tell me something? Maybe, but rather than trying to figure it out here, let’s instead take a look at what these two seemingly disperate items are talking about with reference to things and the internet.

In A Manifesto for Networked Objects — Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things, or Why Things Matter by Julian Bleecker, a designer, technologist and researcher at Nokia Design in Los Angeles outlines a growing segment of the blogging community — inanimate objects. Luggage, Fed-Ex packages, power meters, yes, even pigeons and now Pepsi vending machines according to Bleecker, are the new bloggers. Oh sure, they might not be delving into an endless stream of posts devoted to bubblegum wrapper comics from the mid-twentieth century, but inanimate objects, or “things,” Bleecker says, are starting to create socially relevant capital.

If we define a blogger as “participants in a network of exchange, disseminating thoughts, opinons, ideas — making culture…” like Julian does, objects that blog (or Blogjects as he refers to them) are evolving into participants of the whole “meaning-making apparatus that is now the social web, and that is becoming the ‘Internet of Things.’”

To better exemplify inanimate bloggers and the internet of things, Bleecker’s essay references The Pigeon That Blogs, a project by Beatriz da Costa, an artist who’s work intersects contemporary art, science, engineering and politics. Da Costa equipped a flock of pigeons with Telematics that could communicate to the Internet, wirelessly, GPS info mashed up with toxicity and pollutant levels in the air the pigeons were traversing when they were released on a daily basis. In this context the pigeon is elevated from winged urban vermin to bearers of socially relevant discussion points about the micro-environment. (And yes, I know a Pigeon is living and hardly inanimate, but their knowledge of themselves as bloggers is about as sophisticated as the vending machine at your local mall).

Julian Bleecker set out some characteristics in his essay to help us quantify a Blogject, saying that while the critieria is difficult pinpoint (Pigeons) these three points are often associated with the new, socially relevant, inanimate, in-human culture producer:

• Should be able to track and trace where they are and where they’ve been
• Have embedded histories of their encounters and experiences
• Should be able to participate with an assertive voice within the social web

Which brings us to Pepsi’s newest blogger — a vending machine. The press release announcing Pepsi’s innovation around social vending which was dispatched from Purchase, NY (sorry, I just couldn’t leave that cute little detail out) in light of Bleecker’s points, qualifies itself as a “thing” on the internet of things, a Blogject:

“PepsiCo’s innovative use of telemetry with the Social Vending System also delivers tremendous operational benefits, allowing customers to closely manage inventory levels and delivery scheduling remotely, and easily update digital content online, enabling them to change messaging and media content as needed.”

Pepsi’s new vending machine can dispatch information about where it is, who it’s serviced, who its customer’s friends are, and how low on supplies it is. As for being able to participate with an assertive voice within the social web, I can think of no voice more assertive than that of a video from a friend when you’re purchasing a pop, unless it’s a complete stranger giving you something for free.

Social capital in the form of a plastic bottle, “…a consumer could send a symbol of encouragement to someone in a city that has experienced challenging weather, or a congratulatory beverage to a student at a university that just won a championship. The platform holds potential to extend PepsiCo’s digital and social programs for its food and beverage brands”

The concept of an internet of things has been around for sometime—the aforementioned Fed-Ex package being one of the more prevalent examples of it. But as we move towards a connected world in which objects are having not only more to say, but having more socially relevant things to say, the internet of things is bringing us into a deeper, more complex relationship with machines.

FURTHER:
Julian Bleecker – A Manifesto for Networked Objects — Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things, or Why Things Matter

Pepsi’s Social Vending Press Release

Beatriz da Costa – The Pigeon That Blogs

More on Telematics via Wikipedia

Pepsi – Social Vending

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