The Fediverse of Things
By @edent
· ActivityPub fediverse IoT Social Networks · 15 comments · 550 words · read ~2,864 times.
One of the most frustrating things in modern technology is the effort spent trying to artificially restrict abundance.
Take, for example, this tale from museum-worker Aaron Cope:
I was out with a friend who worked for Twitter and I asked them whether it would be possible for the museum to “create 200,000 Twitter accounts, one for each object in the Cooper Hewitt’s collection”. My friend looked at me for a moment, laughed, and then simply said: No.
In that blog post, Aaron reveals that the San Francisco International Airport Museum is using ActivityPub to create automated social-media bot accounts for all its exhibits and, possibly, every object it hold.
And why not! That would be close to impossible to do on a centralised service. But on a decentralised service under your own control, it is relatively simple. Perhaps I only want to follow the museum's canteen, or I just want to engage with a specific artefact. The Fediverse makes that possible.
This reminds me of the Melbourne "treemail" phenomenon. Every tree in the city had an email address, ostensibly so residents could email maintenance issues for a specific tree. Instead, people started interacting with the trees and sending them little love notes!
Dearest Golden Elm Tree, I finally found you! As in I see you everyday on my way to uni, but I had no idea of what kind of tree you are. You are the most beautiful tree in the city and I love you
A few weeks ago, I read about Ben Smith inventing Tweeting trains. With a bit of code, every train line in the UK was suddenly represented on the web in a convenient format. Well… Convenient if you were on Twitter.
Museums, trees, and trains naturally brings me on to the Internet of Things. I think it is fair to say that IoT is in a bit of an odd place right now. Matter is a confusing mishmash of standards. Security and privacy issues dog the simplest devices. Many people don't even want their toaster online!
For the majority of domestic uses, people want an Intranet of Things. There's little need to have your light-bulbs controlled when you're outside of WiFi range. Similarly, it is probably a really bad idea to have your hydroelectric dam connected to the Internet.
Which brings me back to the Fediverse.
On the one hand, it would be nice to be able to follow @Yellow_Line@Transit_Authority.gov - or even @Bus_Stop_1234@bus_company.biz - that would allow for hyperfocused data getting to the right people. It seems feasible that every civic object could have a Fediverse account. From the individual streetlights to the municipal sewerage system. Perhaps people won't send love letters to overflowing drains - but a social-dashboard of your civic environment could be both practical and delightful.
And, as for your domestic gadgets? Why not give every room, or every light-bulb, in your home a private Fediverse account? You could send a message like:
Hey @thermostat@My_Home.example.com, please set the temperature to 19°C. Thanks!
That might be a bit much! But I like the idea of a private social network which consists of all my IoT gadgets talking to me and each other.
@Edent I love this idea! Both the municipal and the private IoTs. Messaging my local bus stop ‘next bus?’ would be both super helpful and kinda delightful in a way.
@blog Made me remember the story of lazy/creative students, I believe at Carnegie Mellon, who, in the 80s, connected the coke machine so they could check on the supply of soda without getting up from their desks. "finger coke" would return the status. Prescient.
@Edent reading people's love letters to trees always make me a bit teary I must say 🥹. Nice point about a private iot social network.
@Edent I used to work for Hello Lamp Post https://www.hlp.city/ who have done some great practical work of building interactive civic objects in small geographical areas, e.g. some school gates were much better at canvassing parent's opinion on potential road closures than human interviewers were.
@Edent Think @kitwallace has been doing similar things with Bristol trees ( at least they all have a URL/URI). I'd certainly be up for seeing them in a feed.
Somewhat amused to see @thisisaaronland as a "museum worker" : accurate, but not the whole story.
@Edent I had been thinking that Home Assistant could benefit from fediverse foo, though more as a nice way to do cross-home automations. So less “tooting at a lightbulb” and more “turn on the TV, and also the media server I can access via a VPN”.
@Edent while not specifically activitypub-related / any excuse to remember and shout out the “hello lamp post” project is a good one – https://tomarmitage.com/projects/hello-lamp-post/ Tom Armitage » Work » Hello Lamp Post
@Edent You say "artificially restrict abundance" I say "experienced anti-spam response".
It's one thing for the owner of a resource to create thousands of accounts there (domain owner creating email addresses per tree), it's another thing for a third party to do so (museum using a service with account controls designed for humans not bots).
It is simplistic to ignore that.
PJ Evans says:
How much of this does MQTT already cover? Genuine question. Is MQTT the fediverse for IoT?
I don't think it is (although it could be related). It could be, if everyone made their MQTT brokers and data public. I think the semantics that ActivityPub adds, make this more useful - with MQTT you don't typically have a known and strongly typed data packet.
Read to the end for a beautiful ballad about gylcine production
Enquanto o ministro Alexandre de Moraes (também conhecido como Xandão) e o empresário Elon Musk (vulgarmente conhecido como Kiko do Foguete) disputam o destino do X/Twitter (saiba todos detalhes do impasse no RESUMIDO desta semana), o tuiteiro médio já saiu em busca de outras redes onde possa reclamar da
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