Small Assignment: Scott Hudson – German

I read Scott’s paper An Upcycled IoT: Building tomorrow’s IoT out of today’s household possessions (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3466872). This paper talks about an approach to integrate IoT (Internet of Things) functionality to common household objects. The approach of this concept is to maintain sustainability by avoiding replacing existing objects with consumer IoT versions, such as smart light bulbs, smart plugs, etc. The paper discusses the concept of “upcycling”, which means to add IoT functionality to existing household objects to which people may be sentimentally attached. The concept uses RFID enabled stickers that can be attached to objects, allowing some IoT capabilities. For instance, the stickers can function as toggle switches that can be used to track things like feeding a pet cat. The authors discuss the environmental impact of reducing waste by upcycling existing items, rather than discarding them in favor of tech enabled devices as mentioned earlier.
I believe that the paper I read can be related to the ubiquitous computing mentioned in the colloquium. The use of RFID stickers to upcycle household object allows cheap and relatively simple access to IoT functionality. The example of these RFID devices also relates to how Scott mentioned that most change hasn’t happened yet. The devices use pretty well established technology, yet only recently are people experimenting with integrating the devices in a household environment. Additionally, the introduction of these new features can have implications that are hard to predict. The use of these RFID tags in the house could potentially be used to explore new user interactions with technology.