title: Shaping Things to Come by Bruce Sterling date: 11-12-2004 location: munich notes taken by nicolas.nova@epfl.ch -- real-time notes six trends, convergent and integral part of a general concept, six sides of a black box: 1. interactive ships, objects can be labelles with unique identity 2. local and precise positioning systems 3. powerful search engines 4. 3d virtual models of objects 5. rapid prototyping of objects 6. cradle to cradle recycling 1. the key concept: IDENTITY, enables the whole trend sterling's theory: by giving identity/labels/names to objects, you can track them through their lifetime (from cradle to cradle and from cradle to grave), then you can subject them to manipulation. new class of objects with new properties (unthinkable previously): SPIMES a spime is an object that can be precisely tracked through space and time, it's a protagonist that has its own history/trajectory, creates an archives of data. it's a rather german concept, any german name better than spime? the future will see/create billions of small histories for billions of objects then we will realize that the recorded history of objects is more useful/profitable/important than the objects themselves, the data is what really matter, the object is the hard copy how and why this might come to pass in real life? let's talk about barcodes on objects. tens of thousands on every objects, we're living in an ocean of barcodes, we don't notice that but 30 years ago, there we no barcodes, now they're here: a global bureaucracy exists and put barcodes/identity on objects. a global indentity regime for objects! it started in 1975, huge access, enabled inventory, re-ordering, market analysis, better flows, reduction in human errors in the supply chain, good for business however, paper barcodes are obsolete: too slow and limited for the future's purposes new and improves barcodes: RFID, electronic now, numbers (ID for the company + ID that tells what kind of objects it is + security number) more vulnerable but more effective than paper barcode.... allow the internet of things in a paper barcode, no room for each individual object but here (RFID) there is other new barcodes store even more identity information and really small/cheap it's the new model, electronic identity for objects used by wal mart, the pentagon... lots of people don't like that (privacy), powerful then controversial, highly subject to abuse, technical and political questions, called 'spy chips' by some activists. examples: prisons, hospital: same technology, different purposes did you ever search through your pants if there are barcodes there? today RFID are primitive and simple, tomorrow it's going to be more sophisticated someday we will be swimming in this and after that day we will come to understand that the tracking system will then be more important than the object that it tracks. amazon.com is not a wharehouse full of books, the books are not the source of amazon wealth, you can buy things on amazon while they were not made! identity (radio frequency identity) is the first of the trend 2. locative technology thanks to radio waves, you can "hear" the objects (passive RFID has a short range: 10m), our world is full of radio shadows, imagine if RFID has a long range! thieves could locate wealthy people with a lot of RFID tag goods! by beaming radio waves, every objects could tell the thieves what they areqa! this practice is known as skimming: when you steal data from a RFID, a way to hack the internet of things, there will be many other ways if you want to watch your objects, you will need a RFID readers every 10meters, it's a grid of monitors! then it's easy to locate things! the signal could be triangulated; this monitors could communicate: guards and coordinators of the flocks of RFID, they can watch them through the grid, track what they are doing over a long time! everything that has a barcode has hence an history you can search and datamine! this leads to a global network: the internet of things. gps provides a splendid source of accurate measurement: global positioning in the sky 3. search engines google: the most useful tool over the internet because you don't have to remenber where to put things, you just ask (where are my shoes? your shoes are under your bed) google local: already in place, to search out through google things which are closest to you, a search engin for local proximity 4. virtual design we can track objects, give them identites and search them, why don't we work with the original electronic plans of the objects? the object is not come to exist physically until we express the desire to see it produced. sometimes a digital representation of objects is useful, a virtual model is weightless, can be rotated on the screen using 3d design software. freer to author its form. no gravity, no friction, no raw material... i can save/erase/export the changes because it's only data, can be sent to scattered to co-workers in china or india! it's an object processor what can be next? let's simply print the object! 5. a 3d printer: the fabricator i don't event think of the virtual model as the model anymore: in a spime world, the model is the entity and the object is the copy in 30 years, when you need a spime, you search it on the internet, find it like a book on amazon, and until you express your desire for this object, it does not exist, you create a spime by buying it: you legally express that you want it to exist, than a rapid single step of manufacturing, then it takes an identity through RFID/barcode you're then involved in the further development in this object, ownership, tracking... public internet site to discuss the life of your spime... and the spime is able to update itself... 6. at the end of its product lifespan: recycled its identity is removed, it is disassembbled, its components are getting back to the manufacture, it is smart garbage BUT the data are still available for historical matters. the spime is a set of relationships -- what a spime really is? let's imagine it's a shoe, individual and made on demand. i can have a record of my shoe, i can ask for an upgrade of my right shoe. in a spime world a shoe is understood as an unique object with an unique history once my shoe is spime, then i can understand it differently, it's an aspect of the ongoing post-industrial process, a momentary entity. -