The "Internet of Things: bibliography is expanding rapidly.
Glad to see the original MIT Auto-ID lab material in here.
http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/2006/03/internet-of-things-working.php
The Guardian is noticing that availability, ubquity and the willingness to tell others about bargains is affecting our attitude toward physical possessions. I would describe this as a segue away from "consuming" and into 21st-century "wrangling." Ot's the unaddressed sustainability problem that makes that click.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/retail/story/0,,1719765,00.html?gusrc=rss
How is the era of the L3 handbag affecting our attitudes to possessions? Are we happier or less content with what we have? Are cheap goods liberating or imprisoning? And what - once we've bought them, and especially once we've finished with them - do we do with them all?
Gareth Coombs of the Cambridge Strategy Centre, a retail consultancy, sees the social implications: "People used to define themselves as shopping at a certain level. 'I'm an M&S shopper.' It defined your place in the world. Those sort of rules aren't sustainable any more." Tamar Kasriel of the Henley Centre, the social forecasters, is blunter: "The idea that cheap goods are for poor people is totally history."
Factory outlets, like the low-cost airlines that started up in Britain in the mid-1990s, taught people that the price of goods was not written in stone but subject to context and, in particular, the balance of power between seller and buyer.
Coombs and other analysts talk about the satisfaction felt by consumers when they "get a victory" over a retailer - and when they tell their friends about it afterwards. The latter activity, in a sure sign of its popularity, has recently acquired a would-be scientific label: "compulsive price disclosure".
You could see all this hoarding as a sign of a growing attachment to possessions. But Coombs sees it as the opposite. "What was in the living room this year will be in the bedroom next year and in the junk room the year after," he says. Kasriel says the chance to sell to eBay has boosted much we buy. "You can tell yourself you have a sensible financial route out."
Unashamedly "disposable" cheap goods, you could argue, are turning us into traders rather than curators of our possessions. It is another victory for capitalism: we have internalised the unsentimental stock control of the modern retailer. (((Or, you might describe it as an awareness that shoppers are dealing with the material manifestations of an immaterial system, and that they are learning to wrangle that system rather than get all hypnotized by one cheap handbag out of a zillion possible handbags.)))
A
ccording to the European Commission, "Electro-scrap is the fastest growing waste stream [in the EU], growing at 3-5% per year", three times faster than domestic waste in general. In 2002, a European directive was issued requiring member countries to ensure the "re-use, recovery and recycling" of discarded electronic goods. Some retail analysts think the directive - especially its sections on the "financial obligations of producers" to be environmentally responsible, and on how "consumers will be able to take [discarded] products back to shops for free" - will have a significant effect on the cheap electronics market. But Britain and several other countries have yet to comply. (((Because they're stupid. But, time will pass.)))
The harmful metals and chemicals in many electrical goods, and the difficulty of disposing of them, make the less palatable consequences of increased consumption obvious. The afterlife of discarded budget clothing is more ambiguous. Since 1990, the global trade in secondhand garments has grown tenfold.
An interesting BOINGBOING take on this same article:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/20/coping_with_plenty_s.html
