is mapped to the glowing hue of the orb. The concept behind the
design is to provide glanceable information without a screen,
which the Ambient Orb achieves, but only through abstraction
that requires a person to have a clear mental model of the
programmed ruleset. It works well as an early demonstration of
what might be possible with networked objects, but scales poorly
in a world full of such objects. Imagine everyone in your family
having to remember why the orb on the kitchen counter is now
glowing green when it used to be blue. Does it mean the same
thing as the green orb in the bedroom?
Figure 2.x Availabot
On the other side of the spectrum, moving from abstract to
concrete representation, is the Availabot,^19 a physical
representation of your friend’s instant messenger presence.
Created by Schulze & Webb in 2007, Availabot is a bendy,
plastic avatar customized to look similar to a specific person.
This hinged likeness unambiguously communicates your friend’s
availability, standing straight at attention when they are online, or
collapsing in a heap when they go away. The idea was that
Availabot could utilize rapid prototyping capabilities to
economically create one-off representations that were truly
unique for each person they represented, though unfortunately
the product was never brought to market after initial talks with a
toy company.^20 Regardless, it is instructive as an example of a
delightful physical reaction to remote data, though of course it
has the opposite problem of the Ambient Orb in that it can only
ever represent one thing.
Somewhere between these poles is the sweet spot for Internet of
Things devices that react to remote data. Too much abstraction,
(^19) "Availabot." BERG. Accessed January 20, 2015.
http://berglondon.com/projects/availabot.
(^20) "OFF=ON, Or, Whatever Happened to Availabot?" BERG. Accessed January 14,