The Internet as Material

The emerging IoT space holds enormous potential for positive social, environmental, and financial impact, but only if it’s built with the most important node at its center: people. In this O’Reilly report, Ayah Bdeir—founder and CEO of littleBits—discusses how we can democratize the Internet of Things and help eight-year-olds, corporate executives, and professional engineers alike understand, re-create, and innovate in their connected world.

This report is transcribed from Bdeir’s talk at the 2014 Solid Conference. She maintains that the next wave of innovation around connected devices will happen only if people can understand the technology, relate it to their lives, and are able to envision and prototype solutions to real-world problems. That will occur, she says, when the Internet becomes a Material, accessible to non-engineers and non-experts who can grasp and deploy interactions with the Internet in the physical world as easily as they can with physical materials.