and Internet of cats, flowers and trees

Cat: the explorer

Weekend often means going out and visiting exhibitions, especially when London has such a wonderful weather (rain, clouds and all the best the English Summer has to offer, as you may have seen at Wimbledon and Silverstone).

I went to the RCA show just to discover that the Tower bridge is not the only “non-human” twittering in these days: Andy Broomfiled has created not 1, but 3 twitters for a flower, a tree and a cat (image above). Twitters are automatically updated thankx to a “blog bot” platform, by using data coming from sensors attached to animals / objects. I hope he won’t be upset if I use his words:

Blog Bot Platform is an open source system which I have developed for creating Different types of Blogging objects. Turning Simple experiences into online encounters. These bots ‘tweet’ to their experiences to micro blogging services. I am interested in how people react when they encounter these Blogjects invading their web 2.0 space.

what happens when the cat passes on the Tower Bridge, then?

Internet of bridges?

Just discovered that the Tower Bridge has a twitter profile, here: http://twitter.com/towerbridge

why? It tells to the world when it closes and opens, and what kind of boat is passing, in what direction. Very simple thing, and automatically updated from the bridge lift schedule (here), I guess. But it’s a way to make visible something that was invisible before. It could be information to share with other objects (Navigators? My Nike+ iPhone, when I’m running? traffic lights? Buses and transports?).

2 things are nice: 1 is that information is no more just in a web page, but it actually becomes data, ready to be reused and mashed elsewhere. 2 is that an object (bridge) becomes one of my connections. How many things are connected with me? how many other objects of affection could be part of my profile? maybe my mac at home? I could start an automator task to be updated on things…

And it’s funny that a bridge – which represents a connection in itself – becomes something to be connected with.

Also, is the bridge connected to somebody? maybe to the aficionados, people who uses it often…. It could recognize them as they pass, and say hello in a special way (a twitter message?) what kind of information does it receive and read?