LIFT 09: Usman Haque

Bemused by idea of "Internet of Things" -- it unites two things he's not interested in: the internet and things
He is more interested in spaces, and environments, and people
talking about Pachube
[he's using the new zoomy presentation tool to give his talk! Will it work? Will it give us motion sickness? Who knows?]
idea of being connected
- we are connected all over, but we still have neighbors -- they're just non-geographical
- DON'T PANIC!
idea of interdependence
- "their environment is that which they construct in their relationship to each other"
idea of participation
- "spime wrangling": actively engaging in production of our environments
"rubbish is the root of virtuosity"
- to make something beautiful with a tool, you must also be able to make crap as well
so, patchube
- "a genearlized realtime broker for networked environments"
- trying to work with small scale projects: enable a simple system for smaller entities to more casually share data
- they do not specify what gets shared; it's
not an internet of things but an ecosystem of environments
- not about rooms that change color when I walk in, not corporate sensor nets, about sharing "the context of my environment" with "the context of your environment"
[I think this is where the terminology gets dodgy. For Haque, the "environment" is co-constructed at the interface between a self and the felt-world.