Commercial Collaborations: Tools, things and toys - Rafi Haladjian #2

Gav’s already written a little about the presentation given by Radi Haladjian from Violet, but worth saying some more I think - the Internet of Things is way cool, and Rafi and Violet are as close to bringing it about as anyone else - plus Rafi is one of the most engaging presenters I’ve seen for a while so well worth another look.

Violet has a very simple philosophy: “virtual things in cyberspace are passe, the new frontier is the real physical world, meatspace.”

Violet’s first venture into this area was the DAL lamp launched in 2003. Hardly a commerical success, it sold 170 units back in 2003. A wireless device, with its own CPU, it was pretty damn costly for an ‘emotional lamp’ that changed colour and activity based on information fed into it (so if you had a new email, it could glow, or if the weather forecast was of a certain type, it could change to a pre-defined colour).

Nabaztag, however, lifts things to a whole new level, and - conveniently - it’s a dumb device, all wireless and no CPU. Much cheaper…

Why a rabbit though, as a ‘thing’ to connect to the internet? Violet’s site makes all manner of Alice in Wonderland related comments, but Rafi suggests the real reason was that he’d always liked rabbits and had one on his desk when they had to make a decision of what to connect. But there are also some good supporting reasons - anthropomorphisation is always helpful with this kind of thing and well, connecting a fridge, for example, to the internet, seems obvious. A rabbit, however, is more likely to make people think.

Also worth noting that the difficult name (Armenian for rabbit, allegedly) is deliberate, as is the way that the device has awkward version names - it’s all about breaking the technology code as well as moving away from standard technology design aesthetics.

Rafi’s bottom line is that he wants to make people think. Why do we need his rabbit? We don’t. He’s the first to admit it. It’s not even a device - as he puts it - to get info, it’s simply to be aware of info. “Low Calorie” information like Facebook statuses or the weather. It’s an inanimate object that becomes “an information butler” but still, people love it, as the below clip should demonstrate:

Rafi’s key point is that it’s inevitable that the Internet of Things is where we’re headed, and that everything will indeed be connected. The Mir:ror he highlights (discussed more by Gav) is fantastic and I’ll so be getting one, and Rafi ends with what he refers to as “Stupid maths”: so we’ve got around 1bn PCs in the world. WOW. And then there are about 3.3bn mobile phones. DOUBLE WOW. But there are what 100bn pieces of stuff in the world? The barriers between Cobjects (connected objects) and Nobjects (non-connected objects) are already blurring, and this can only continue.

Bring it on. Great session.