in Teaching

On the Internet, nobody knows you are a toaster

A project at Köln International School of Design.

In 2016, hackers shut down large parts of the Internet, using hundreds of thousands of connected household appliances: smart light-bulbs, surveillance cameras, TVs, and toasters. The project will investigate such networked and computational things as non-human actors: What could a toaster be doing on the internet? What would the Internet do with a toaster?

We will learn how to build objects that act on their own, and that connect to each other and the rest of the world. To that end, the basics of working with networks, sensors, actuators, and the materials they connect to will be learned. This knowledge will then be applied to the design of new objects that inhabit our networked and material world.

Winter term 2018/2019.