1.
EASST 2010
3 September 2010
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)

2.
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

3.
Internet-of-Things, Web of Things, Physical Web, Ubiquitous computing
Many names for one phenomena
memory objects
connected objects and devices
smart homes
media objects

4.
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 manufacturer
during production.
It is also envisaged that consumers will have the ability to ‘read’ the tags
through the use of mobile ‘readers’ and use the information connected to
the object, to inform their purchase, use and disposal of an object.

5.
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)

6.
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).

7.
The Evolution in the usage of IoT
objects
IoT objects can IoT objects IoT objects
be identified can sense can act
and tracked

8.
IoT Objects can be identified
and tracked

9.
IoT Objects can be identified
and tracked by endusers

10.
IoT objects can sense
sensing tracked products
sensing car
sensing shoe
sensing clothing twittering plant

11.
Where is the sensor?
The human is the sensor

12.
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.

13.
IoT objects can act

14.
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)”

15.
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? and
their re-use (for different applications)?
• The searching of the IoT environment using IoT objects?
www.dyse.org

16.
First integration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMVZIc_MWh8

17.
IoT model example
The number of
chickens inside
The number of
breaders inside
hen
house The number of eggs
inside
Fox attack (event)
Egg laid (event)
10
8 • What is the average time between two
6
M y e ggs
laid eggs?
4 M y ne ighbo urs e ggs
2 • Alert me when I have more then two
0
Mo We dn F ri Su
breeders and when there is a fox attack

18.
The context model we work with

19.
The model of the IoT world
a sensor
a person
mobile
internet
an object
a space

20.
LC1
What we can learn about objects
What is the composition and position
of an object in the world?
What is the composition and position
of an IoT object in the world?
Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976)
Don Ihde (1934) Bruno Latour
(1947)

21.
Slide 20
LC1 die vraag in het kader moet geherformuleerd worden
Laurence Claeys; 25/08/2010

22.
What we can learn about objects
Graham Harman (1968)
Object-Oriented Philosophy

23.
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 human
consciousness
• 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).

24.
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).

25.
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 object
depending on what they want to use it for
• People know every moment (or can ask every
moment) what smart behavior is active (final control)

26.
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)

27.
The role of technology
in the work of Don Idhe
Technological
mediation creation
technology  reduction
world  amplification
human
( - )   ( - ) (- / )  - ( )
Embodiment Hermeneutic Background Alterity
relation relation relation relation

28.
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)

29.
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 always
completely 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?

30.
What can we learn from Latour?
• Does every entity only exists as an event?
how can we implement this?
“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)
• 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?

31.
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? and
their re-use (for different applications)?
• The searching of the IoT environment using IoT objects?
www.dyse.org