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As always, a shout out to tinyletter.com/pbihr or a forward is appreciated!

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Howdy,

Still working on getting back into some kind of rhythm. Working in a kind of baby-induced shift system until daycare starts, and (until last week) without a babysitter hasn't really helped with regular non-critical tasks (i.e. "the fun stuff", like writing this newsletter). But slowly all systems are coming back online and structures of some regularity emerge. Not complaining; just explaining why this isn't (yet) back to your usual regular Friday delivery. That said, enjoy!

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Let's have a riot

Please excuse the pun, I couldn't help myself. RIoT, of course, refers to Responsible IoT. With the ThingsCon network we've just published a report, "The State of Responsible IoT 2018", which is out now. Enjoy!

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Soon on my (virtual) book shelf

Seems it's writing season. There are 3 books about tech & society that are about to come out and should all be great:

• Smarter Homes by @iotwatch
• Future Ethics by @cennydd
• Turned On by @drkatedevlin

I've pre-ordered numbers 1 & 3, and reached out to Cennydd to see if and where to best pre-order or buy his book, too. It should be out any day now.

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Objective Reality - Object Stories Edition (Vimeo). What are these connected objects thinking? A collaboration between automato.farm (Simone Rebaudengo & gang, see automato.farm) and Bruce Sterling. I like a good design fiction, and the folks involved here make some of the best.

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Notes from Dynamicland: Geokit Patrick (sentiers.media) is right, watching the stuff coming out of Dynamicland is the closest I've ever been to feeling like what it must have been to see Xerox Park in its heyday. This is incredibly cool.

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Japanese notes on the smart home. Leonardo Amico writes about his experience with Japanese not-quite-smart homes:

"The Smart Home in 2018 seems to be made just of things that we can control through an app or devices that struggle to understand what we want from them: internet re-engineerings of what we could already have or a technology that doesn’t actually work well for its purpose. Considering this, there seems to be wisdom in how Japan is doing it. Just sticking to their buttons and remote controls: something better has yet to come." This, 100%.

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Betahaus moves out. Berlin's pre-eminent coworking space, is moving out of their location of 10 years. The place has been part of my life one way or another for pretty much a decade; I've worked from there on and off throughout those 10 years, I'm friends with the founders, in fact my current office is just across the street. For their moving party, M and I swung by to say hi & goodbye even though it was our first baby-free evening since we had the little one. I'd say they, together with the Prinzessinnengärten community gardens could be singlehandedly credited with making Moritzplatz cool. So it was a bit of a moment of reflection for me, too. The new location in the taz building sounds ace, too, and from what I hear the team has great plans for the future. On to new shores!

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Year Million. Just stumbled over National Geographic's mini series from 2017, Year Million. The trailer featured space habitation, augmented humans with gills, and some human drama in a post-sth sth world (but projected quite far out to the titular year. From the trailer I couldn't tell if I should laugh or weep (IMDB echoes this with a middling 7.4 rating), and it's still sitting there unwatched in my queue. But might be worth poking around in: Year Million

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We Need Software to Help Us Slow Down, Not Speed Up (WIRED). The idea of the Icebox browser plugin that puts your online purchases (or rather: purchase intents) into a queue rather than processing them right away is an interesting way to counter impulse purchases. However, I found myself not install it, so there's that.

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Shout out: Festival of Maintenance will take place in London (22 Sept). It should be lovely.

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I wish you an excellent weekend.

Yours truly,
Peter

PS. Please feel free to forward this to friends & colleagues, or send them to tinyletter.com/pbihr

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Who writes here? Peter Bihr explores the impact of emerging technologies — like Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence. He is the founder of The Waving Cat, a boutique research, strategy & foresight company. He co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that fosters the creation of a responsible Internet of Things. In 2018, Peter is a Mozilla Fellow. He tweets at @peterbihr. Interested in working together? Let’s have a chat.

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The picture at the top and this one via Unsplash (Kody Gautier, Alexandr Bormotin).