How do 'Smart' Objects describe themselves?
Emeline Brule | CoDesign Lab, Télécom Paristech
8th SIG Design Theory Paris Workshop
A Work in Progress
'Smart' Objects are everywhere.
Are 'Smart Objects' just like technical Objects?
Technical Objects are defined in the field of sociology, anthropology, philosophy...
Comment décrire les objets techniques ? (1987)
Les objets techniques et leurs utilisateurs. De la conception à l’action (1993)
Le Mode d’Existence des objets techniques (1958)
Aramis ou L'amour des techniques (1993)
What things do (2005)
Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions (2006)
Do Artifacts Have Politics? (1980)
A technical Object could be described as a situated, composite and heterogeneous form concretizing a scientific concept. It may embed a “program of action”, a “script” for human use, which evolves through relationships. It holds a discourse, although it is not only the result of the designer herself. Therefore, technical Objects are deeply politicized, but can not be seen purely as an embodiment of institutional strategies. They are to be considered as actors, contributing to shape the social fabric, engaging with people and communities.
Hypothesis 1
Technical Objects have, at least, a contingent agency.
Let's consider the 'object Phone'-or should we say the 'family of phones' (Wittgenstein)
Why the Phone?
First technical Object connected to the worldwide network to enter households and everyday lives.
An important “morphological evolution” by “concretisation” (Simondon). Various relationships to networks, to users.
First object to have been described as 'smart'.
What if...
Hypothesis 2
A learning method is the precondition for an object to be categorised as ‘smart’
Object + active learning (algorithm) = ?
By learning algorithm, we understand a computational method wich improves the performance of a program to a task, when provided an experience. Here, experience refers to the past information available to the learner.
From the Telephone to the Smartphone
The Western Electric model 500 telephone
Henry Dreyfuss's analysis of the statistical user
AT&T PhoneWriter Communicator
‘Smart’ objects: a question of agency
Classifications are either based on their capabilities, on the communication infrastructure (for example document-based) or on their design dimensions. Their autonomy and the “augment[ation] of human perception” are also part of the recurrent criterias.
- Hernandez, Marco E., and Stephan Reiff-Marganiec.
Classifying Smart Objects Using Capabilities - Kawsar, Fahim.
A Document Based Framework for User Centric Smart Object Systems (2009) - Kortuem, Gerd, Fahim Kawsar, Daniel Fitton, and Vasughi Sundramoorthy
Smart Objects as Building Blocks for the Internet of Things(2010)
“The Internet of Things (IoT) is defined by ITU and IERC as a dynamic global network infrastructure with self-configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual “things” have identities, physical attributes and virtual personalities, use intelligent interfaces and are seamlessly integrated into the information network”
“Strong hierarchies are broken in favour of meshed, networks and formerly passive devices are replaced with “smart objects” that are network enabled and can perform compute operations”
IERC―European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things
Hypothesis 3
A technical Object takes part of a larger network. It is always ‘connected’ to its environment.
An ‘augmented’ object adopts features that are not natives to its first function.
A ‘smart’ Object is an ever changing performative entity (Butler), based on a “to-be-shaped” material.
Six dimensions of public algorithms
- Patterns of inclusion (how the data is pre-processed)
- Cycles of anticipation (how the prediction made are used)
- Evaluation of relevance (what criterias are used to privilege one or the other outcome)
- The promise of algorithmic objectivity
- Entanglement with practice (the way algorithms are tweaked or misused)
- Production of calculated publics
Humans are back to the center of the network―they literally connect its dots.
'Smart Objects' might be the oncretisation of technical Objects as its best, giving the object the possibility to be a fully fledged agent. But it blurs even further the logic underlying our everyday tools.
Where, in every ‘learning’ Object, are the controls?
Further work should examine what are the algorithmic dimensions of person-oriented algorithms, and the way bodies are taking into account. The discourse thus hold, the knowledge produced should also be investigated. Are those objects part of our modern épistémè? Or do smart devices are developing specific conditions of being in the world?