Making Public the Network of Things. "˜Internet of Things"™ and "˜Dingpolitik"™

Abstract

Most of the analysis and prospectives that address the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) tend to polarize between those who passionately bless the growth of efficiency and comfort it will bring and those who warn against the terrible threat to our privacy. Trying to separate from this dichotomy, this paper defends the critical appropriation of this technology in order to explore the possibilities it could contain for the development of a more open, political conscious and participative society. More precisely, it will uphold that the perspective opened by the project of a «politic of things» (Dingpolitik), developed by authors such as Bruno Latour, could be useful to guide the political development of some of the potentialities derived from the connection of different products and commodities to the Internet of Things through smart labels.