Spime is a neologism for a futuristic object, characteristic to the Internet of Things,[1] that can be tracked through space and time throughout its lifetime.[2] They are essentially virtual master objects that can, at various times, have physical incarnations of themselves.[1][3] An object can be considered a spime when all of its essential information is stored in the cloud.[4] Bruce Sterling sees spimes as coming through the convergence of six emerging technologies, related to both the manufacturing process for consumer goods, and through identification and location technologies. Depending on context, the term "spime" can refer to both—the archetype, as designed by the developer, or a user-specific instance of it.
Spime Watch: Spime Script
"So, I want to return to one part of that 2006 presentation which I still find relevant - the formation of Spime Script. We're entering a phase where hardware will become increasingly as malleable as software which leads to a problem of choice - if I want to change the function of something, do I do this in software or hardware? The tendency today is obviously towards software because its more malleable but the future is never the past. However this creates a problem of skill - will I need to become proficient in both software and CAD / electronic design?
Smart Disorganized Individuals: SpimeScript
These days, I'm thinking a lot about 3D printers, desktop manufacturing and software to create physical things. Last year I did some art...
Temporal: The 9-Year Journey to Fix Time in JavaScript
JavaScript's Date object has been a source of bugs for three decades. Temporal, which just reached Stage 4, is a modern replacement with immutable types, first-class time zone and calendar support, and nanosecond precision. This is the story of how Bloomberg, Igalia, and the TC39 community spent nine years turning an idea into a shipping standard.
The one and future internet
The internet has become inextricably entangled into our economies, cultural and social lives. We stand on the brink of the next technological revolution, in which the internet of things transforms ...
Architecture and the Internet: Designing places in cyberspace
Cyberspace, as the information space is called, has become accessible in the past decade through the World Wide Web. And although it can only be experienced through the mediation of computers, it is quickly becoming an alternative stage for everyday economic, cultural, and other human activities. As such, there is a potential and a need to design it according to place–like principles. Making places for human inhabitation is, of course, what architects, landscape architects, and town planners have been doing in physical space for thousands of years. It is curious, therefore, that Cyberspace designers have not capitalized on the theories, experiences, and practices that have been guiding physical place–making. While most 3D environments closely mimic physical spaces, they are, by and large, devoid of the essential characteristics that differentiate a ‘place’ from mere ‘space.’ And only rarely are they sensitive to, and take advantage of, the peculiarities of Cyberspace. We believe that this state of affairs is temporary, characteristic of early adoption stages of new technologies. As the Web matures, and as it assumes more fully its role as a destination rather than as means of communication, there will be a growing need to design it according to place–making principles. By looking at physical architecture as a case study and metaphor for organizing space into meaningful places, this paper explores the possibility of organizing Cyberspace into spatial settings that not only afford social interaction, but, like physical places, also embody and express cultural values. At the same time, because Cyberspace lacks materiality, is free from physical constraints, and because it can only be ‘inhabited’ by proxy, these ‘places’ may not necessarily resemble their physical counterparts.
(PDF) The Comparative Anatomy of Nanopublications and FAIR Digital Objects
PDF | Beginning in 1995, early Internet pioneers proposed Digital Objects as encapsulations of data and metadata made accessible through persistent... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
Timeline
Thinking Machines Inc. develops a new Internet protocol dubbed WAIS. Users can download a WAIS client to search through an array of distributed servers and access the documents stored there. The protocol supports fuzzy searching, custom tailored results, and decentralized data storage, but ultimately loses out to the web.
The Year of the Software Factory
We are building LifeBuild, a personal operating system for your life where AI agents help you draft projects, prioritize your commitments, and stay on top of what matters—from health to relationships to finances and beyond. This Lab Notebook chronicles our explorations.
The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile : Computerphile
A web app that works out how many seconds ago something happened. How hard can coding that be? Tom Scott explains how time twists and turns like a twisty-turny...
Everything is miscellaneous : the power of the new digital disorder
Includes bibliographical references (p. [235]-257) and index; Prologue : information in space -- The new order of order -- Alphabetization and its discontents -- The geography of knowledge -- Lumps and splits -- The laws of the jungle -- Smart leaves -- Social knowing -- What nothing says -- Messiness as a virtue -- The work of knowledge -- Coda : misc; Philosopher Weinberger shows how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our lives. Human beings constantly collect, label, and organize data--but today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Everything is suddenly miscellaneous. Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. He examines how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children's teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future.--From publisher description; From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think - and what you know - about the world. Includes information on alphabetical order, Amaxon.com, animals, Aristotle, authority, Bettmann Archive, blogs (weblogs), books, broadcasting, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), business, card catalog, categories and categorization, clusters, companies, Colon Classification, conversation, Melvil Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification system, Encyclopaedia Britannica, encyclopedia, essentialism, experts, faceted classification system, first order of order, Flickr.com, Google, Great Books of the Western World, ancient Greeks, health and medical information, identifiers, index, inventory tracking, knowledge, labels, leaf and leaves, libraries, Library of Congress, links, Carolus Linnaeus, lumping and splitting, maps and mapping, marketing, meaning, metadata, multiple listing services (MLS), names of people, neutrality or neutral point of view, New York Public Library, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), order and organization, people, physical space, everything having place, Plato, race, S.R. Ranganathan, Eleanor Rosch, Joshua Schacter, science, second order of order, simplicity, social constructivism, social knowledge, social networks, sorting, species, standardization, tags, taxonomies, third order of roder, topical categorization, tree, Uniform Product Code (UPC), users, Jimmy Wales, web, Wikipedia, etc
Historical pragmatism and the internet
This article argues that the literature describing the internet revolution in the 1990s was characterized by the rhetoric of the technological sublime. This rhetoric suffered from three fatal flaws: (1) it was not sufficiently grounded in the historical development of technology; (2) it viewed the internet in isolation, failing to consider the wider technological context; and (3) it failed to examine the internet in view of the social, economic, religious and political circumstances of its users. Several examples from history are cited, demonstrating that changes in various systems for the production, dissemination and preservation of cultural information both border and deborder the world. The article suggests that if internet researchers take a pragmatic, historically grounded approach, they will discover that the introduction of internet technology can be seen to have similar consequences. While the technology overcomes many boundaries (of space and time, politics and economics), other social borders may be created at the same time. It is easier to see old boundaries coming down than to see new ones being erected. Rather than being swept by utopian or dystopian enthusiasms, the article insists that the really interesting discoveries are to be made in locating the subtle social shifts taking place, relatively unnoticed, as a consequence of technological change.
Human-computer intra-action: a relational approach to digital media and technologies
The growing pervasiveness of digital technologies has exposed the entanglements of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with its surrounding context, from the immediate vicinity of interfaces to global issues. While often providing solutions to societal issues, interactive technologies also many times contribute to them. They impact and are impacted by the world, in a process of continuous mutual influence and co-constitution that raises important implications not only to user experience, effectiveness and efficiency, but also to ethics, social responsibility and environmental health. In this article, I draw on the new materialism notion of intra-action to propose a conceptual shift to a relational approach for HCI, which I refer to as Human-Computer Intra-Action (HCIA), capable of capturing from the outset the inherent relationships with the world that inform the design of interactive technology. To that end, I propose the notion of relationalities to reflect the synergies and antagonisms around those relationships, and discuss emerging notions of spatiality and temporality by considering the increasing hybridity of socio-technical engagements both in space (local versus remote) and in time (immediate versus stretched). Based on that, I propose a preliminary method for mapping intra-actions associated to interactive technologies, envisaged as a starting point to a relational take on their design process.
Claude Design is a "clock time" solution for a "calendar time" problem
Orgs are betting that they can substitute sense-making with faster artifact delivery. Users are paying the price.
ActivityPub, AT Protocol, and more!
Talking about this article and how ActivityPub and AT Protocol are maybe not as different as people might think. We covered some slides to an unrecorded talk of mine, which explores a lot of things...
100 years of whatever this will be
What if all these weird tech trends actually add up to something? Last time, we explored why various bits of trendy technology are, in my o...
Speculative Technologies
Speculative Technologies is a nonprofit resarch organization unlocking new materials and manufacturing technologies
