Ok, so I was right in the middle of a post about video gaming and I got distracted trying to look for a definition in Wikipedia. While I was at the eTech06 conference Bruce Sterling gave a speech where he talked about Blogjects. I was going to try and link to Wikipedia, but there was no entry for it... so I created one:
Blogject is a neologism for an object that gathers metadata about it's interaction with people, other objects, or its environment. Just as people can blog about their interactions in the world, blogjects similarly gather and communicate this information as well. The term was first used publicly by Bruce Sterling during a keynote speech at the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference 2006 in San Diego, California.
It is possible the word is an evolution of the term Blobject used by Bruce Sterling during his SIGGRAPH 2006 speech in Los Angeles, California.
I guess that is the power of Wikipedia right? I guess I will see if it stays up there... I have no clue if I got the details right... but I figure it is a good start to get the correct definition up there. That is what wikis are for... they allow people to start a conversation and collaboratively arrive at the best answer... the Wisdom of Crowds baby.
So what is all this talk about Blogjects? While at eTech I had an idea to build a Blogject front-end using the Xbox360 XML data feeds. Steve and I have been working on it a few weeks on and off and here is what we have so far. The next step is putting it into a linear blog format so that you can have an RSS feed for your Xbox and it will tell you each day what happened to it.
Update 4/3/2006 10:50pm
Excellent! It looks like the Wikipedia page has already been updated with more correct information about the term Blogject. I guess it is Julian Bleecker who we actually have to thank for such an awesome term! The internet rules...
Crazy enough, I attended Bleecker's talk at eTech06 about Pervasive Electronic gaming (pdf). It was one of my favorite sessions of the conference. I came across his blog... subscribed!
I'm sure you've seen the changes on the Wiki page, but you probably want to check our Bleecker's page: http://research.techkwondo.com/blog/julian/185#comment
Posted by: eripsa | April 03, 2006 at 06:21 PM
Thanks Eripsa! Great stuff on his page!
Posted by: Trapper Markelz | April 03, 2006 at 11:02 PM
Dallas: hey... what they hell is a "blogject"?
Dallas: and follow up: should I care?
Matt: I looked it up on wikipedia
Matt: because I wondered the same thing
Matt: apparently, it's when an object blogs
Matt: at least that's the best I could guess
Matt: or like, an object reporting about itself
Dallas: fascinating.
Dallas: tell me no more.
Dallas: huh
Matt: so, in a way, the first blogject would be that coke machine at MIT that you could telnet to to find out how many cold cans of pop it had
Matt: (that's my guess)
Dallas: when my supercomputer jobs start and finish, they send me an email.
Matt: (I did not read anyone saying anything about that being a blogject)
Dallas: ah
Dallas: hmmm... I'm leaning towards "not caring" on this one.
Matt: yeah, that's pretty much what I came up with too
Posted by: Matt Stratton | April 07, 2006 at 09:12 AM
It's just a neologism for an already existing concept... so you don't really have to care... sort of like AJAX. It just creates a common way of discussing a specific set of behavior patterns surrounding inanimate objects...
The key is that a blogject can cause us to anthropomorphize it through it's communication. Imagine your Xbox guilting you into playing it... humans are easily tricked in this manner (otherwise we wouldn't have so many damn pets).
Posted by: Trapper Markelz | April 07, 2006 at 01:13 PM