Remaking Everyday Objects
Rob Kitchin, Martin Dodge · The MIT Press eBooks · 2011
This chapter discusses the role of code in the transformation of the nature of material objects and their work. It emphasizes that software is imbuing material objects that include domestic appliances, handheld tools, and recreational gadgets with an awareness of their environment and capacities that allow them to do a variety of work. The chapter begins with an exploration of how objects are becoming addressable, aware, and active by using identification technologies, and discusses two general types of coded objects: Peripherally coded objects and codejects. It further states that the nature of many objects and material processes is being alternatively reconfigured and defined through software enrollment. The chapter concludes that the sociospatial contours of the lives of common people are having an impact on machine-readable and coded objects as they are playing an increasingly important role in helping people with their daily tasks and routines.