Spime

//A true Spime creates spime wranglers. Wranglers are the class of people willing to hassle with Spimes. And it is a hassle. An enormous hassle. But its a fruitful hassle. It is the work of progress. Handled correctly, it can undo the harm of the past and enhance what is to come.// --Bruce Sterling (Perey, 2012)

= Spime, the basics: = Who : Science-fiction novelist Bruce Sterling What: Predicted the development of a technology he referred to as “spimes” in his //nonfiction// book entitled __Shaping Things.__ Sterling noted the following characteristics of spime: -Will embed a story in every object -Will link all objects to each other -Will have identities (the protagonist of a documented process) -Will be searchable like Google When: 2005 (Smith, 2010) Where: Essentially any and everywhere Why : “Within the next five years, billions of Internet connected wireless smart objects will be in use, according to global technology research firm ON World… The major technology trends” … that are driving this market “include IP Addressable Smart Objects such as smart phones and tablets and Wireless Mesh Networking that allow for remote control home security and energy control (Sterling, 2013). Sound familiar? Many of us are currently using these types of technologies.

= Example #1 = The [|Stickybits] app has given life to Sterling’s prediction and definition of spime. “Every place and object in the world has a secret past: who lived there, who passed by, who touched it. The secret lives of objects are filled with such details. If only you could make them talk. But what if you could give any physical object a story simply by sticking a barcode on it and appending a message to that barcode? The message could be a photo, a text message, a video, or a voice note. All anyone would need to unlock the message is a phone with a special barcode scanning app” (Smith, 2010).

Spimes could bring new meaning to the phrase "If these walls could talk"!!

= Example #2 =

Donna "Suzy" Hall

References

Perey, C. (2012, October 1). Is it augmented reality? [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.spimewrangler.com/blog/augmented-reality/is-it-augmented-reality/

Radio-frequency identification. (2013). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification

Smith, J. A. (2010, April 6). Bruce Sterling: State of the spime [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-state-of-the-spime

Smith, J. A. (2010, March 15). Stickybits, spime, and sharing [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://www.shareable.net/blog/stickybits-spimes-and-sharing

Spime. (2013). In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 31, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spimes

Sterling, B. (2013, January 30). The mobile cloud of addressable things [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/