Igoe - Making Things Talk

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A few years ago, Neil Gershenfeld wrote a smart book called When Things Start to Think . In it, he discussed a world in which everyday objects and devices are endowed with computational power: in other words, today. He talked about the implications of devices that exchange information about our identities, abilities, and actions. Its a good read, but I think he got the title wrong. I would have called it When Things Start to Gossip , becauselets face iteven the most exciting thoughts are worthwhile only once you start to talk to someone else about them. Making Things Talk teaches you how to make things that have computational power talk to each other, and about giving people the ability to use those things to communicate.

For a couple of decades now, computer scientists have used the term object-oriented programming to refer to a style of software development in which programs and subprograms are thought of as objects. Like physical objects, they have properties and behaviors. They inherit these properties from the prototypes from which they descend. The canonical form of any object in software is the code that describes its type. Software objects make it easy to recombine objects in novel ways. You can reuse a software object if you know its interface the collection of properties and methods to which its creator allows you access (as well as the documents so that you know how to use them). It doesnt matter how a software object does what it does, as long as it does it consistently. Software objects are most effective when theyre easy to understand and when they work well with other objects.

In the physical world, were surrounded by all kinds of electronic objects: clock radios, toasters, mobile phones, music players, childrens toys, and more. It can take a lot of work and a significant amount of knowledge to make a useful electronic gadgetit can take almost as much knowledge to make those gadgets talk to each other in useful ways. But that doesnt have to be the case. Electronic devices can beand often arebuilt up from simple modules. As long as you understand the interfaces, you can make anything from them. Think of it as object-oriented hardware . Understanding the ways in which things talk to each other is central to making this work, regardless of whether the object is a toaster, an email program on your laptop, or a networked database. All of these objects can be connected if you can figure out how they communicate. This book is a guide to some of the tools for making those connections.