The Embedded Internet

The Embedded Internet lets us observe things about our world that we would otherwise miss. With these observations, we can start to understand the consequences of our actions, and ultimately, make sensible choices for ourselves and for the planet.

In early 1966, Stewart Brand was musing on a point made by Buckminster Fuller: “People act as if the earth is flat, when in reality it is spherical and extremely finite, and until we learn to treat it as a finite thing, we will never get civilization right.” NASA had been putting people in orbit since 1962, yet had not published any pictures of the earth from taken from space. So Brand started a viral campaign, distributing buttons and posters that demanded “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet?”

His efforts bore fruit. Reports of his campaign was picked up by major newspapers, and in 1968 the Apollo 8 flight gave us the first photographs of the whole earth as seen from space—one of the most famous pictures is shown here.

In Brand’s words:

Those riveting Earth photos reframed everything. For the first time humanity saw itself from outside. The visible features from space were living blue ocean, living green–brown continents, dazzling polar ice and a busy atmosphere, all set like a delicate jewel in vast immensities of hard–vacuum space. Humanity’s habitat looked tiny, fragile and rare. Suddenly humans had a planet to tend to. The photograph of the whole earth from space helped to generate a lot of behavior—the ecology movement, the sense of global politics, the rise of the global economy, and so on.

And yet.

Out of sight, out of mind

As much as I revere Brand’s work, we really haven’t seen the whole earth yet. We are told that the hole in the ozone layer has been getting progressively worse since it was first reported in 1984. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been on the rise since 1759. We know these things are happening, but since we can’t “see” them on a daily basis we haven’t done enough to take appropriate action.

It’s human nature: we tend to change our behavior only when we can see the consequences of our actions.

There’s hope. One of the powerful facets of Device Networks is that they let us observe things in our physical world that have been previously invisible. Southern California Edison ran a simple pilot program that used networked Energy Orbs from Ambient Devices that glowed blue when power was inexpensive, green during peak hours, and red during “super peak” periods. The result? Customers cut back on their peak period usage by 40%.

The broad view

Device Networks can act as a “macroscope” over a large geographical area to observe phenomena that would otherwise go undetected. We can construct network sensors that monitor radon levels in thousands of homes in real time and analyze that data to predict earthquakes. We can build a giant distributed weather station by linking rooftop solar panels into the Embedded Internet and deduce the wind speed and direction as clouds’ shadows progressively occlude one panel and the next.

The long view

And sometimes “slow time” is just as important as “real time”. The Embedded Internet’s ability to record and analyze historical data lets us observe changes that occur too slowly for us to notice otherwise. Long term recording and analysis of global temperature data and CO2 levels can tell us much about our impact on our very finite planet. It’s not a coincidence that Stewart Brand was one of the creators of the Long Now Foundation.

By making manifest that which was previously invisible, the Embedded Internet can help us become better stewards of our small and precious planet.

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