About the IPOE project

What is the project about?

• "Sometime between now and 2010, the internet is poised to reach beyond virtual space and take root in the physical world. According to many futurist thinkers, almost every object you can see around you carries the possibility of being connected to the internet. This means that your domestic appliances, your clothes, the books on your shelves and your car in the driveway may one day soon be assigned a unique IP address, just as both computers and web pages are assigned them today, to enable them to talk to each other." (Dodson, 2008)


• This proposed 'Internet of Things' - where the boundary between on and offline becomes nonexistant, objects will simultaneously exist in our everyday lives and as part of an online archival network. Through our interaction with these objects we will become increasingly integrated into this network and through our daily interactions we will inform both the taxonomy of this living archive and the semantic folksonomy of what these objects represent.


• We live in a consumer society that promotes the aquisition of objects, some that serve a function and some merely as aesthetic collectables. Over the course of time, many of these objects become obsolete, broken or defunct and as consumers we are encouraged to replace them with newer, better, smarter versions. As the future of manufacture will entail creating these IP enabled 'smart objects', what will happen to the possessions we currently own? Many of our existing possessions can be described as priceless and irreplaceable - not because of their inherent value but because of their importance to us, their sentimental value.


• Many of us hold on to these obsolete objects as there is often a memory or association attached to them. These objects now have a new purpose; to act as an aide memoire or mnemonic to trigger memories. These may be of a specific event, a person or a nostalgic token of the past. These objects have outlived their practical purpose - hence the term 'obsolete ephemera' - but are cherished none the less and if all our future possessions are potentially to have an IP address, why not these?


• I have taken a selection of such objects from my home, and created my own IP enabled objects using RFID tags, thus elevating these obsolete ephemera into 'smart objects' and rather than communicating with each other they are able to communicate the memories attached to them and in particular the relevance they have to me.

Why RFID?

• The future of 'smart objects' supposes an autonomous ability to broadcast information about themselves wirelessly, in an efficient and inexpensive way. The technology required would be RFID - which could be incorporated into an object easily and thus enable it to transmit a signal and a unique ID to a monitoring system.


• Currently RFID has only a limited broadcast range, therefore my IPOE requires you to interact with an RFID reader. The presumption is that this technology will improve enough so a network of readers could be installed that receive the signals from the surrounding smart objects and could triangulate their positions and status and this information would be available and searchable online. Hence you have created an 'Internet of Things' - real world objects that exist both on and offline.


• RFID is becoming increasingly pervasive in society - with chips incorporated into passports, driving licences, bank cards, travel passes and ID cards. This combined with smart objects suggests a future society augmented with RFID technology.

IPSO and IPv6

• The internet as we know it today is evolving and the current incarnation, IPv4 (Internet protocol version four), is rapidly running out of capacity for new IP addresses and so the next generation IPv6 - which will provide a staggering number of unique addresses; 5x10(to the power of 28) for each of the 6.8 billion of us on earth. In other words, every human on the planet could have a personal network the size of today's internet. This stratospheric jump in capability has instigated the creation of the Internet Protocol of Smart Objects (IPSO), specifically designed to facilitate the intercommunication between sensor enabled objects. This protocol will allow IP enabled everyday objects to communicate with one another via the internet.


• Therefore your fridge could update your online shopping order as items ran out, your fire alarm could tell your gas appliances to turn off if it senses a fire and eventually you could use Google to find your slippers.

Surveilance and Monitoring

• Obviously, due to their inherent capabilities these 'smart objects' will also transmit information which details more information about their owner - where they are, where they've been and what they have been doing with those objects. If you had IP enabled clothes for example, your movements would be trackable and traceable as you move through different RFID reader networks. Your fridge could transmit what you are buying and consuming. Much like the browsing history on a web browser, your smart objects could detail your movements and habits as you undertake your everyday lives.


• Our current legislation includes the The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 which regulates public authority use of the interception of communications and other covert surveillance techniques;

  "To make provision for and about the interception of communications, the acquisition and disclosure of data relating to communications, the carrying out of surveillance, the use of covert human intelligence sources and the acquisition of the means by which electronic data protected by encryption or passwords may be decrypted or accessed"

  Such things as intercepting email, monitoring telephone calls and surveilling social networking communications are included alongside traditional techniques, - these powers used in conjunction with smart objects would tell any investigating party everything about you and detail every step that your IP enabled shoes take.

SPIMES and Transparent Manufacture

• Bruce Sterling, author of Shaping Things devised the idea of a sustainable smart object - a SPIME. He envisioned the Spime as a step towards transparent manufacture - with objects ‘fabbed’ (fabricated) on demand and processes of manufacture wholly apparent rather than discreet and secret. This would create a much more sustainable model - as objects made in unethical ways with unsustainable methods would tell you straight off the shelves - making them unpopular and unprofitable. To maintain the similar consumerist culture, products would have to be desirable and able to tell you how to recylcle them once they were obsolete. Thus creating a sustainable manufacturing model.

The living archive

• I also want to investigate the current relationship we have with objects and ephemera - which is a direct relationship wth our consumerist existence - and highlights the task of tagging and rendering each item a smart or IP enabled object we become aware of the scale of our own consumption and hoarding of paraphenalia. The tagging of current everyday objects creates ‘transparent consumption’ which makes our consumerist traits obvious to the internet enabled world and above all ourselves.


• Would this knowledge change our habits? If we tagged and archived every item we owned and bought we would see our level of waste and consumption. Sterling states that there is no ‘away’ left to throw things and we need to radically rethink our current model of living to create a sustainable future - perhaps the Internet of Things would cause us to question what we hold onto - why we no longer use objects and perhaps by making all our possessions archived - we could facilitate the distribution of items to those without rather than simply sending them to landfill, much like a global freecycle movement.