“The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things” by Bruce Sterling discusses what the term “Internet of Things” refers to and what it means in terms of the advancement of technology. \u00a0The Internet of Things is the concept that as we develop our devices further we can connect them to more of our everyday items such as the refrigerator, toilets, vacuums, and other appliances. As Sterling discusses in the reading, having our items connected seems like the obvious next step, but he stresses that we as a society need to question what this means and how it effects our roles in the system, and how it takes away from our control. \u00a0A society that is entirely connected is a society that will be entirely controlled and watched. \u00a0There is always someone overlooking a network, and as Sterling points out, the Internet of Things is a technological shift to a “materialized network society”. \u00a0I found a particular argument of his very intriguing; that we as users are no longer customers, and that the term customer implies some type of control in the system. \u00a0As a customer, you pay for something and therefore the corporation relies on your business to survive. \u00a0In the future of materialized networks, I agree with Sterling that the corporations no longer rely on us because they no longer feel threatened by a possibility of us “unplugging”. \u00a0If everything is connected, we have no choice but to partake. \u00a0The Internet of Things seems to be the beginning of all my fears coming to life. \u00a0I firmly believe that society as we know it functions on a lot of small victimless crimes and flaws in the system. \u00a0I also think the Internet of Things severely adds to a greater gap in the social classes. \u00a0By having everything automated, we are taking away from the jobs deemed “unimportant” or lower paid. \u00a0These jobs however are the jobs that provide many Americans with an income. \u00a0It also makes me uneasy to think of who controls the network when everything is connected. \u00a0It’s too much power in one place. \u00a0I have no doubt that increasing connectivity will happen slowly, but I think it’s important to ask if something needs to exist just because it is convenient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things” by Bruce Sterling discusses what the term “Internet of Things” refers to and what it means in terms of the advancement of technology. \u00a0The Internet of Things is the concept that as we develop our devices further we can connect them to more of our everyday items […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":688,"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.courses.tegabrain.com\/SS15\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}