Connecting Paper? Extending "the Internet of Things"

ReadWriteWeb regularly keeps us posted on "the internet of things". This is an interesting development and has even been called "web 3.0" (web 2.0 moving to devices, connect people and devices automatically, using semantic technology...).

Their post gives an overview of the news in this world. What I was wondering though is: Paper is also a thing. And knowledge workers are still using lots of paper (printed articles (for reading and reviewing), books, etc.). Could "the internet of things" be extended to the office? We could 'internet' paper. With small (printable) RFID tags, paper documents and books (or even parts of them) could be retrieved (and stored) in a transparent way.

What do you think? Could this be useful? And, does anyone know if this is already being done?

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 18, 2009 at 5:29 PM

    If paper documents are important enough to tag them, they are probably already part of some controlled environment. RFID wouldn't add much then I think?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 18, 2009 at 6:52 PM

    There is a small group of us at Ricoh Innovations (www.rii.ricoh.com) who have been researching and pondering this very point. We've been experimenting with QR Codes (see http://icandy.ricohinnovations.com for our first public demonstration of this) to see if there are particular benefits or affordances to having intelligent paper. One thing we've learned is that the use of QR codes give us the opportunity to measure paper click-thrus -- allowing for expanding marketing and promotional analytics.

    We've also been working on the concept of hot paper - see this youtube video that describes the concept:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gv3wJNdvYA

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownFebruary 18, 2009 at 8:10 PM

    Thanks for the comments. @Twan: True, most documents have a digital source. But don't you get documents of which you don't have that source. You could scan them in, but usually that's too much work. And I regularly copy articles from magazines in the library of which I don't have the digital version. That article, with the comments in the sidelines, I usually archive somewhere.
    @ricoh: Good to hear from you and thanks for pointing to your research. At Oce some research has been done on this topic too in the past. I'll have a look at your demo's!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousFebruary 20, 2009 at 9:54 AM

    Samuel,

    I have worked on this at GR3, filed an umemo (dismissed) and build a demo (for the 'R&D opendag')...you might be able to 'doxx' it?

    Joost

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownFebruary 20, 2009 at 10:05 AM

    I know Joost, but didn't want to write too much about it. Was sure if I'm allowed to. ;-)

    ReplyDelete

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