BigShinyThing

There has been some good punditry on the edges of Web 2.0 this week. And some great new words. Julian Bleecker as been writing about Blogjects — networked objects which can report back on themselves, their actions and their environment. Blogjects are the early precursors of the pervasively networked Everyware (aka Ubiquitous Computing, Things That Think etc) that’s been kicking around in post-grad research circles for years.

Unlike those ivory tower projects, blogjects are, in the rough and ready spirit of noughties geekery, being hacked together right now. Previously we’re reported on pigeons which blog. The lastest upgrade version of Sony’s cutesy Aibo dogbot can blog as well. There’s something in the air (other than the networked ‘flying rats’) at the moment around this kind of thing, and Bleecker captures the zeitgeist well:

Occasionally objects, things, non-humans, non-subjects step out of their thingness to become more than lifeless props. Things can learn to walk upright, too, so as to distinguish themselves as valued companion species, with something to say, something to effect our disposition and attitude about our (we humans) role in managing and maintaining, or mismanaging and terrorizing the world in which we live.

The Sony designers who created the firmware upgrade for Aibo may have been unwitting participants in the Blogject evolution. The new version of the Aibo — a species whose future is uncertain — can take pictures of what it sees and establish a running blog of its whimsical musings. It’s hard to resist the significance of the extrapolation of this idea, particularly when thought of in the context of our elaborate and bizarre kinship associations with domestic pets — arguably our closest companion species.

Pets that blog are just the 21st century, networked world extension of the sometimes puzzling practice of giving pets “human” names like Bill, or referring to them with decidedly human kinship semantics like daughter or brother. As long as they have a network connection, why shouldn’t they get their Web 2.0 upgrade and participate in the circulation of media and content? Things now have a voice in the collective of human social exchange.

Has to be said that the robot dog blogs are pretty same-y. But then, they’re blogs made by robot dogs. What do you expect? Shakespeare?