Personally, I see a great change in reality television and the online profiles/characters people try to create for their benefit and understood that they can build a following for being outgoing and sometimes try to chase the shock factor of it all. The issue with today is that negativity sells and people will latch onto that if it means an opportunity to be casted into film/tv/modeling or whatever the entertainment world offers. In the article “The Future of T.V.: Digital, Traditional And Something In Between” states that there are be different types of trends and content between short and long content but they are all serving a purpose in that T.V. will be delivered but just in a different way and the future will be able to tell it all.  It states “Using data to determine which shows get produced, “Youʼll see all the main players adopt more data-driven models,” said Andersen. The viewers are in control, They want to watch whatever show, whenever they want, on whatever device they want. So you’ll start to see T.V. everywhere – on any device. On-demand T.V. – there will be more and more of this. What’s going to happen to traditional line-ups? The concept of channels goes away, when people just choose their shows. The navigation experience, “User interfaces will be more intuitive than your current remote control.” and that alone is self explanatory, TV is not only here to stay but is reaching an even wider audience with a specific taste. Reality TV also was something that was conjured up by a man named Josh Harris who created “We Live in Public” which was a volunteer based reality tv show made with a fully constructed basement where 100 people will come and live to be recorded 24/7, no matter what they did. Harris received footage that many people couldn’t even imagine and one Jan 1, 2000, the police ended the show but the fact of the matter is that Josh Harris was the first legitimate reality tv show and showcased how people will react to being place in makeshift environment with strangers then after his show was taken down, CBS produced the show “Big Brother” as a result. Which leads to the last point, I personally feel that reality television changed the way that we understand human connection because people don’t take anyone’s feelings into consideration anymore, there are way more heated moments than peaceful ones and people tend to think that no matter the instance that they’re right. Reality TV made people forget that they’re humans and shifted their focus on trying to be the center of attention.

Crowdsourcing is simply the act of being in the midst of a split in the road, that split is: A) Go the traditional route, keep the same production intact and have everything on the same frequency or B) Go the nontraditional route, find a group of people who can create/achieve what you’re looking for and at a significantly cheaper cost. The issue with crowdsourcing for people who handle specific tasks is now that these same people are losing their business to people who are willing to do more work between several different parties. The effect that crowdsourcing has had on companies is these companies are in the position where they aren’t looking for a singular source anymore to have something created but are now reaching out to several people to get this task completed and many of these people are eager for the opportunity to show what they can do because they’re looking for an opportunity to have positioning in this company and/or the world. The article “Digg: The Rise and Fall of an Internet Darling” stated “You’ve probably been noticing that tech stories are becoming less and less a feature of the social news site. The reason? Digg is attempting to attract a large mainstream user base. Just how low has tech sunk in digg? We have new data that shows that the number of frontpage tech stories is halving every year on digg.“. So the site lost out on it’s tech stores and is now just on the back burner to other sites such as reddit, engadget and gizmodo because of it’s lack of spreading out news. This relates to the article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” because this article shows why these companies are so interested in crowdsourcing. It states “For the last decade or so, companies have been looking overseas, to India or China, for cheap labor. But now it doesn’t matter where the laborers are—they might be down the block, they might be in Indonesia—as long as they are connected to the network. Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees.” So now these companies not only have to pay their typical employees the rate they’re used to but they can also really just pick and choose who they want to carryout a task to help themselves, not illegal but definitely something that will affect the traditional worker. This also adds another element to this rise in crowdsourcing, differentiating between the professionals and the rising amateurs. The article “The Blurring Line Between Amateur and Professional” stated “Only a small group of professional writers had access to the technologies of mass publication, it seemed obvious that writing for publication was a job for professionals. And because the rest of us had never participated in the process, it was widely assumed we didn’t want to. We now know that assumption was wrong. Many ordinary people jump at the chance to be producers as well as consumers. They blog. They tweet. They upload YouTube videos and Flickr photos. They create Wikipedia.“, so now that everyone has the same tools as the professional in their hands then they’ll be able to have the same access as the professionals did as well too. So crowdsourcing essentially may affect the professionals who are at the top but give an opportunity for someone else to come and show case what their creative ability for content creation is for these platforms.

Imagine robots ruling the earth. That seems like a movie topic, something a producer would want to showcase to the world to make profit from their audience. It’s a type of movie plot that actors such as Will Smith participated in, but this is slowly becoming a reality. More and more we’re seeing that objects and devices are connecting to the internet. Refrigerators are being connected to the internet to tell you what you need when you go grocery shopping, and iPhone has had “find my iphone” for years so users can track where their iphone is located in case it became lost. Julian Bleeker came up with the term “blogject” which  means that a physical object can essentially blog. A perfect example would be Siri or Alexa, two search servicing objects that can tell you what you need to know by just saying their name first and then talking to them. They then take this data and use it in the future to make things more convenient for you. They can give you reminders and set alarms for you, and they can even tell you about traffic before you head out the house. Neil Gershenfeld, author of As Objects Go Online, states that “By 2010, the number of computers on the Internet had surpassed the number of people on earth“. There are so many computers out there, and they aren’t just taking form as your traditional PC/desktop/laptop- they’re our phones and our other smart devices. There are devices that can connect to household things that serve a purpose- to remind us and to track data. There are e-collars that can be used to track animals, even chips the size of a single rice can be used to send data to the internet to help you know where they are at all times. Robots aren’t just talking, almost-human-looking beings. They are any device that can report data and connect to the internet. We’re seeing more and more of them being created, for better or for worse.

Objects being connected to the internet definitely has and abundance of upsides. And as technology progresses they can be beneficial to everyone, but it can be exploited if put into the wrong hands. Today we have what Julian Bleeker calls the internet in their article A Manifesto for Networked Objects — Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things the “everywhere internet” he describes it as “— an Internet that spills out beyond the tethered connections and local WiFi hotspots to consume nearly every corner of the physical world — “.

Neil Gershenfeld and JP Vasseur wrote in their article As objects go online: the promise (and pitfalls) of the internet of things “Giving objects access to the Internet simplifies hard problems.“ not only does it simplify hard problems, but it makes easy ones a piece of cake. Right now, not only do we already have access to the internet in the palm of our hands, but with Amazon’s Echo and other smart objects, we have the availability to connect the entirety of our homes. For example, if you own an echo and smart light bulbs, you can control the lighting in your home simply by saying “Alexa, ______ the lights”

Although we can benefit from these smart object, unfortunately things could also get worse. Let’s face it, there are terrible people in the world, If these people are given access to smart technology, they abuse it and things will turn for the worse. For example, in Nellie Bowels article Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse they explain how people, mainly women, experience abuse from an assailant who has the access to the smart object connected to their homes.

“Smart home technology can be easily harnessed for misuse for several reasons. Tools like connected in-home security cameras are relatively inexpensive — some retail for $40 — and are straightforward to install. Usually, one person in a relationship takes charge of putting in the technology, knows how it works and has all the passwords. This gives that person the power to turn the technology against the other person.”

If someone is in a violent relationship and their abuser has access to these objects, the victim will always be a target. Taking these things away could also potentially escalate their relationship and could lead to the victim in fear of getting hurt or worse. Thus, the internet in object could definitely be beneficial, but only in the right hands.

The world is becoming inherently electronic. Everything we once had to manually operate is becoming more easily accessible, such as television now having remote controls and voice operating systems for people who don’t want to leave their couches. This may not always be a good thing. In the article by the New York Times Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse,  it states “Connected home devices have increasingly cropped up in domestic abuse cases over the past year, according to those working with victims of domestic violence. Those at help lines said more people were calling in the last 12 months about losing control of Wi-Fi-enabled doors, speakers, thermostats, lights and cameras. Lawyers also said they were wrangling with how to add language to restraining orders to cover smart home technology. Muneerah Budhwani, who takes calls at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said she started hearing stories about smart homes in abuse situations last winter. ‘Callers have said the abusers were monitoring and controlling them remotely through the smart home appliances and the smart home system,’ she said.” In other words, many of these appliances are not only becoming accessible for those who need them but those with malicious and controlling intent. Abusive people now have an easier way of ensuring they can control their target in ways that are not as straightforward as seen before throughout history.

This isn’t, however, to take away from the benefits of technological enhancement. In Why Things Matter, the author addresses “blogjects” and how they’re objects that blog. Of course, it is possible they could overtake what people do in a way and eliminate human bloggers almost entirely. But it is also fairly possible to use these amazing technologies to our benefit. A great example provided by the article is “the Pigeon that Blogs” project. ” It’s a pigeon, or more precisely, a flock of pigeons that are equipped with some telematics to communicate on the Internet wirelessly, a GPS device for tracing where its been flying, and an environmental sensor that records the levels of toxins and pollutants in the air through which they fly.” This is a greatly beneficial aspect of this technology that hasn’t been used before this period in history. Despite the dangers, there are also good things to happen with implementing technology into every day objects; it’s just about who uses them.

It’s no secret that the Internet has been around in our world for more than 50 years. Since 1969, the internet became an icon in the tech world filled with websites, servers, and others. But what really makes the internet that helps us find and search for things we don’t understand and the answer is very simple: objects that created it. We call those objects the Internet of Things so let’s run down the role it played on creating this extraordinary invention.

Let’s think of the internet of things as a multidimensional doorway to all networks that keep us all connected in the real world. For example, in an article from Foreign Affairs entitled, As Objects Go Online, Neil Gershenfield and JP Vasseur stated, “The Internet of Things is not just science fiction, it has already arrived. Some of the things currently networked together send data over the public Internet, and some communicate over secure private networks, but all share common protocols that allow them to interoperate to help solve profound problems”. This quote is truly a fact that the internet of things have benefits to help us to create networks for our own society.

Now let’s discuss the method of objects that made the internet so unique. If you have a computer and want to connect it to the things, then the objects can do all the work for you by transferring your data to the mainframe but believe me, it really works. That is why Julian Bleecker made an excellent point about the connection of the internet of things in the PDF reading, Why Things Matter, that “Once “Things” are connected to the Internet, they can only but become enrolled as active, worldly participants by knitting together, facilitating and contributing to networks of social exchange and discourse, and rearranging the rules of occupancy and patterns of mobility within the physical world”.  It is true that the internet of things can help connect us to other users by communication through social life in the real world.

Sure the internet of things could have benefits for a safer and secure society but it also takes a downfall due to the abuse of technology that affected us since it was introduced. According to the New York Times article, Thermostats, Locks, and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse, Nellie Bowles believed “Their stories are part of a new pattern of behavior in domestic abuse cases tied to the rise of smart home technology. Internet-connected locks, speakers, thermostats, lights and cameras that have been marketed as the newest conveniences are now also being used as a means for harassment, monitoring, revenge, and control.” This quote proved that there was a price to pay for the overuse of technology that we were fallen victim to the controlling methods and antics that the internet has made to cause panic and madness among the community.

For my final thought and my conclusion, the internet of things played an important role in the field of technology because of the connections it made to help us communicate ourselves better but not only that but it also helps us understand the positive and negative methods so we could connect the things we care about the most to make the internet more useful, fun, safe, and secure in reality today.

P.S: Happy Anniversary to the World Wide Web, serving and helping the world for 30 years since 3/12/89 and here’s to another 30 years in the future.

Works Cited

Vasseur, JP, Gershenfield, Neil. As Objects Go Online. Foreign Affairs. 2014. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2014-02-12/objects-go-online

Bleecker, Julian. Why Things Matter. Critical Networks. http://criticalnetworks.coin-operated.com/WhyThingsMatter.pdf

Bowles, Nellie. Thermostats, Locks, and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse. The New York Times. 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-devices-domestic-abuse.html?fallback=0&recId=17YkHDo1w6yNhRavYZhvgzdhRsl&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=NJ&recAlloc=thompson_sampling&geoCountry=US&blockId=signature-journalism-vi&action=click&module=editorsPicks&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

The internet is something that was created with the intention of being beneficial to people. It is hard to disconnect from the internet because of the simple fact that you can not be a human being without being connected to the internet. Everyone uses the internet in some shape or form. Whether it is to check the weather on a weather app or updating a status. People can’t resist using the internet especially because it’s so accessible. Some airlines have inflight WiFi and people actually pay to use it. It is like they can’t stay unconnected from the world for a few hours. The youth especially has grown up only knowing the internet and how to be connected to each other without physically seeing each other so it would be hard for them to imagine a world without internet. The internet will only advance into the physical objects in our homes and people would not even question it because they are use to depending on the internet for everything. In the future I believe that connecting physics objects to the internet is both beneficial and detrimental. Julian Bleecker’s article shows the beneficial side of the internet. Attaching GPS’s to pigeons to tell us the quality of the air is great. We are using internet to benefit us and ensuring that our air is healthy for us to breathe. Internet usually makes things better in a way that it makes the objects smarter and more advance. It could however create more hacking but people tend to risk their privacy for the internet and fancy gadgets. Hacking could be both beneficial and detrimental. We would learn how to stop these hacks and make the security even stronger. But, if we can’t learn how to it puts peoples’ privacy at risk and makes them vulnerable. The article written by Nellie Bowles contributes to the detrimental side of internet on physical objects. The fact that the male partners can see everything that the female does gives her no type of privacy. That’s the problem with the internet expanding at such a fast rate, privacy is slowly disappearing. Her view makes sense at how mostly the men install these types of security cameras and have the most access to everything.

To say that the connectivity of the world has been revolutionized by the internet is a vast understatement when you consider “the internet of things.” When I first began regularly using the internet as a child, I saw it as a way to chat with my friends and not have to read through books for access to information. I could not have imagined the type of information that would now be accessible just two decades later.

Connecting inanimate objects to the internet makes people able to acquire a wealth of data that would go unnoticed without this advancement in technology. For this reason alone I would say that “blogjects” and “spimes” are an immensely beneficial part of modern day living. If companies used blogjects to collect data that would make their products more ecologically friendly they could decrease their carbon footprint and possibly set a standard for how other goods are made or used.

In “Why Things Matter”, Bleeker states: “Blogjects aspire to relevance, and assert themselves because of new perspectives or additional insights they can offer on a semantically meaningful topics.” This is a particularly significant aspect to consider when thinking of the potential good that blogjects can do. There are areas of the world that we know little about or go overlooked but if we connected an object to the internet these objects could shed light on these areas and peak people’s interest. I imagine all sorts of scientific discoveries happening as a result of the use of this technology. The blogject can go where human beings cannot.

As with any new technology, there is always a fear of the technology becoming too powerful. There are questions of whether or not people will maintain the control of the objects, and I agree that is a realistic fear. However, I do not believe that people should let fear get in the way of technological advancements. We know that there is a chance of misuse of products intended for good. But is that not true of  any piece of technology. I mean, you could seriously injure someone with a butter-knife! As long as we steer our technology to make our lives easier it is definitely worth exploring more and more.