Project

Connectibles

Connectibles are small "keepsake" objects that are exchanged by individuals, establishing a communication portal between them. As an ecology of objects, the Connectibles system physically embodies a social network; as an ecology of "smart" objects, it can automatically build rich representations of social networks. Any gift from one person to another contains information about the relationship between the giver and the receiver, but this information remains locked away in each object. If we could capture this information, we might expose social networks that have both more detail and greater consonance with a user's "reality-based" social network than current virtual, Internet-based social network applications. We might also open up a new, tangible way to interact with social networks, using as phicons the very same sentimental objects that represent people in the user's social network.