Internet of Old Things

This short paper reflects upon the temporal characteristics of the emerging phenomenon known as the Internet of Things. As objects become individually tagged with unique identities through the addition of small electronic chips or bar codes, their history is recorded and made available to others across a network. The advent of this ever-growing catalogue of histories means that every object will be ‘in touch’ with its current and previous owner at all times, and suggests that whilst owners might like to ‘forget’ about an object, we will never truly be detached from them. Such a network presents opportunities for society to reconsider how it disposes of objects and instead consider how we might pass them on to future owners. However the author suggests that current industrial interest in the potential for an Internet of Things is hindered by an adherence to a linear model of time that is more interested in the production and sale of new objects than the histories of the old.