I've written a fair amount on this topic, and I see it's getting worse.
My long-time Second Life pal Roland Legrand, the tech journalist, has written enthusiastically as he always does about all things innovative and tech about a new labelling of things in the makerbot Thingiverse and the creation of a "social network of things". Gosh, just what you need, eh? Your toaster friending your refrigerator and your loaf of bread. They may live their lives without you if you don't watch out!
Naturally there's the creepy Bruce Sterling to enter the picture and speak of it this way -- as "almost" a social network (only a geek would call networked inanimate objects "a social network" lol) -- naturally the word "affordances" is used. Wait for the next installment, where they will say, "emergent behaviour" lol.
My comment:
Well, it’s the Internet of Things, in app form.
I’ve always really resented this and despised it. Because it means that hordes of techies who got there first because they made the tools will do all the annotating of reality. They will make the notes on things they like, in the way consistent with their culture. This will be awful in every respect. We will all be stuck with their annotations from their culture, just like we’re stuck with their crappy code that doesn’t work, just like we’re stuck with their Yelp reviews or Rate my Prof reviews that they get to first. This will take a long time to iron out, and in that time, they will do a lot of damage!
All you have to do is to look at Wikipedia to see the results of a world where all the things are labelled by first-adopter geeks. Horrendous.
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