Programmable behavior everywhere, in everything.

“A nice article”:http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/11/to-eat-or-be-eaten.html from @mikeloukides that extends on the “software is eating the world” idea, and talks about how the world is eating software. Programmable behaviour is getting stuffed into everything, and the trend is just going to accelerate.

I’ve got a pile of computers on my desk right now – Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, Beaglebones. They just keep getting cheaper. And faster. And lower power. And re-imagined in new form factors – go look at the number of Arduino variants you can buy. And I’ve got a pile of super cheap sensors on my desk – cameras, audio, pressure, temperature, humidity, IR, you name it. Computing and sensing is getting so cheap, it is going to be embedded everywhere – and not just in the obvious places, but in objects made of “fabric or paper or wood”:http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=3794, or in “plastics”:http://www.3ders.org//articles/20121122-printing-electronic-sensors-using-low-cost-3d-printers.html. This last one is really fascinating, combining 3d prototyping and electronic behavior, I can’t wait to play around with this.

And the world is getting more capability to build these devices. Prototyping with 3d printers. Funding bootstrapping by Kickstarter and its ilk (for example “circuits.io”:http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/11/28/circuits-io-kickstarter-like-electronics-funding-raspberry_pi-robotic-shield-on-launch/). Easy sourcing via services like “Maker’s Row”:http://makersrow.com.

Exciting times. I got involved with personal computers because I was excited about bringing computing power to everyone. This next wave of bringing computing power into everything seems even more exciting.