Internet of Things
TED TALK about the Internet of Things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaTIt1C5R-M
The “Internet of Things” is long term infrastructural project that tech companies have been discussing about since the grand reveal of the first ever (and probably last since) internet connected toaster at an Interop Internet Networking Conference in 1989. The idea behind the internet of things is to “connect devices over the internet, letting them talk to us, applications and each other.” (Kobie, 2015) (Note: the language that sounds eerily like Latour speaking!) Primarily a concept that had been floating around the silicone valley region for the first few decades, IoT became a buzzword in many countries outside of the states in the mid 2010s. There are a lot of investors putting in money to the idea from all over the world. I first noticed the buzz around the word when it started featuring in a lot of Japanese morning tv chat shows and magazine articles. In these contexts, the chat show hosts would always talk about the level of IoT development occurring in Japan in comparison to Japan’s east asian neighbours (S. Korea and China)- in the same way “gu-ro-baru-ka” -globalisation was talked about back in 2012. It appears that IoT has become the next infrastructure that equates to a “modern society”.
I think IoT is a perfect contemporary example of how infrastructure is a combination of technopolitics and the poetics of aesthetics. This TED talk
Contributed by MisakiHata on 20/02/2017
