Thing Theory

Thing Theory: Connecting Humans to Location-Aware Smart Environments

As architects, entrepreneurs, hoteliers, healthcare professionals and others embrace the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Smart Environment paradigms, developers will bear the brunt of constructing the IT relationships within these, making sense of the big data produced as a result, and managing the relationships between people and technologies. We explore how PolySocial Reality (PoSR), a frame...

Can the Sofa Speak? A Look at Thing Theory

Wonderful Thing

W ith the increased dependence on networks and the near ubiquitous availability of the Internet, there is a new paradigm in place for the proliferation of spyware, viruses, and other malware. In fact, much attention has been given to spyware in popular literature with reports from multiple sources indicating that spyware has perhaps reached 90% home user PCs [2]. There is reason to believe this...

When is one thing equal to some other thing?

One can’t do mathematics for more than ten minutes without grappling, in some way or other, with the slippery notion of equality. Slippery, because the way in which objects are presented to us hardly ever, perhaps never, immediately tells us–without further commentary–when two of them are to be considered equal. We even see this, for example, if we try to define real numbers as decimals, and th...

The Impossible Thing

W hat is it?,” Sierra Rodriguez asked her older brother. “You’ll have to guess,” Billy answered. Sierra looked up at the object that was hanging —almost as if levitating —from two crisscrossed cables in the barn. “Does it y?” she asked. “Nope. It lights up.” “So you mean it’s just a light,” she said, glaring at her brother. “What’s so special about—” “It’s not just a light.” Billy began moving ...