Why Things Matter Resposne

                Julian Bleecker, author of “Why Things Matter”, talks about the fascinating potential behind the idea of what he describes as “Blogjects”. According to Bleecker, Blogjects are literally physical objects with the capability of blogging. The idea is that blogging is complex and takes into account more than just simple facts or data. Once a physical object becomes connected to the internet it has the capacity to engage in the social exchange that exists and gains a higher status, defined by Bleecker as being a “first-class citizen” with which we can interact and communicate with.

Bleecker is suggesting a futuristic idea where objects exist, absent of artificial intelligence and strictly with the capacity to conjure a meaningful conversation with the networked online population. Currently, Blogjects do not exist, therefore making it a futuristic ideology. Bleecker gives examples of things that could potentially lead into this idea of Blogjects, called Spimes. The idea of a “Spime” was suggested by Bruce Sterling. The significance of a Spime is that it is a thing that can be searched, contains a history, has a known location, and has the ability to communicate with other things.

In his article, Bleecker gives us an example of a project done by Beatriz da Costa of a “Pigeon that Blogs”. A flock of pigeons have devices attached to them which can give them the ability to blog. They are given a GPS device for tracking their location, an environmental sensor, and a wireless internet connectivity device to have that information attainable in real time. These three things directly establish this project as being a flock of Spimes.  With the ability to locate the pigeons at any given time they will also have a recorded history of where they have been (using the GPS device), giving us the historical and location based aspects of a Spime. Having details of its location based history it makes it something searchable. We are able to go online and search in (for example) Google maps where those pigeons have been previously. The connectivity to the internet wirelessly gives the pigeons a chance to communicate with other things online by providing its GSP location data as well as the readings from the environmental sensor. In turn, it is the readings from those environmental sensors that give the pigeons meaning, like a Blogject would have. Although the pigeons may not be able to have a two-way conversation about their meaning, they are suggesting a path for which a conversation can take place among other “things” (or people). In combination with the other aspects of being a Spime (location, history, search) the idea of these environmental pollutants readings forces people to think about a topic and conjure a meaningful discussion around that topic. People would have a harder time thinking of a topic based solely on the environmental sensorial readings. If we can attach a location to those readings which we can track and search, we have something to compare and talk about, in contrast to just numerical readings that could exist anywhere.  

From my understanding, in his article, Bleecker suggests that a Blogject is something that has not yet been achieved or perfected. His idea seems to support the idea of a positive future if we, as artists, continue along this path of creating meaningful “Things” that don’t fall into the uncanny valley of a creepy robot.