Tinker: Defining the landscape of the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things has been a buzz word that is slowly turning into a reality, depending on what kind of goggles you have on and I thought I’d start trying to map what the current landscape looks like for us. Focusing on the products or product experiments out there, there are 3 assumptions I’m making:

1. We’re assuming the Internet and the data it produces and real world products both exist in the equation. This can seem simple, but it’s kind of tricky. At the moment, the difference between a “product”, a “device” and a laptop is really blurring. A coffee cup is still a coffee cup though right? So it’s about how much the product is defined by technology at that point.

2. You can track the real world
These are objects that allow you to track things in the real world and send it to the internet to visualise.
In this category, I’m putting in:
- Fitbit which tracks your sleep and activities
- Bakertweet which lets a local bakery tell the internet what’s in the oven,
- The Bridge by Current Cost which allows you to post your energy consumption online.
- Webkinz which is a plush toy that goes with an online world.
- RFID tags in general as well as barcodes
- Generally the whole Personal Informatics space as very well defined by Tom Coates and Matt Jones a few years ago.

3. You can display data in the real world
There are objects which pull down data in order for you to understand it more easily or as a way to activate something in real life. In this bucket, I’d put the following projects:
- The Ambient Orb and the Ambient Umbrella by Ambient Devices that react to online data like stock exchange or the weather
- Widetag which allows you to see energy in a collaborative way.
- Bubblino by Adrian McEwen that blows bubbles according to an event hashtag
- The Sony Ericsson pumpt campaign we were involved in where tweets activated a grid to inflate space hoppers.

4. You can do both.
Then there is a strange category where you can do both and create new behaviours and expectations around products and data. That is where I think the really exciting ideas will start to emerge I think. Examples so far include:
- Nabaztag, the internet connected rabbit.
- Olinda by Berg, the social radio.
- Stickybits, stickers with a code where you can assign virtual behaviours to each.
- Rewind project where an FM radio was connected to Nokia phones and Last.fm.
- The Good Night Lamp, a family of connected lamps.

On top of these experiments, there is of course a lot of literature, and thinking which makes for a really rich landscape. We’re going to be working on visualising it in the next few months at Tinker and it’s going to be really exciting. If you think I’ve forgotten your project (or someone else’s) please comment!