Rob van Kranenburg: The Internet of Things. A critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID (2008)

The Internet of Things is the second issue in the series of Network Notebooks. It’s a critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID by Rob van Kranenburg. Rob examines what impact RFID and other systems, will have on our cities and our wider society. He currently works at Waag Society as program leader for the Public Domain and wrote earlier an article about this topic in the Waag magazine and is the co-founder of the DIFR Network. The notebook features an introduction by journalist and writer Sean Dodson.

In Network Notebook #2, titled The Internet of Things, Rob van Kranenburg outlines his vision of the future. He tells of his early encounters with the kind of location-based technologies that will soon become commonplace, and what they may mean for us all. He explores the emergence of the “internet of things”, tracing us through its origins in the mundane back-end world of the international supply chain to the domestic applications that already exist in an embryonic stage. He also explains how the adoption of he technologies of the City Control is not inevitable, nor something that we must kindly accept nor sleepwalk into. In van Kranenburg’s account of the creation of the international network of Bricolabs, he also suggests how each of us can help contribute to building technologies of trust and empower ourselves in the age of mass surveillance and ambient technologies.

Table of Contents:
1. Forward: A tale of two cities Sean Dodson
2. Ambient Intelligence and its promises
3. Ambient Intelligence and its catches
4. Bricolabs
5. How to act

Network Notebooks editors: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer. Copy editing: Sean Dodson. Design: Studio Léon&Loes, Rotterdam http://www.leon-loes.nl. Print: Telstar Media, Pijnacker. Publisher: Insitute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. Supported by: Amsterdam School of Design and Communication, Interactive Media (Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and Waag Society, Amsterdam.
Network Notebooks 02, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2008. ISBN: 978-90-78146-06-3.

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