Schneier’s way smarter than I. But one part of the article seemed a bit off. I don’t think it’s so much an organism as an ecosystem enabling algorithms to directly physically interact with is and each other in meatspace. We’ve already been doing this for a while now, basing our own actions on information and decisions gathered and made by algorithms. This kind of seems to me like another step in the automation of previously human labor; it’s just that this time that labor, doing the bidding of algorithms, is itself a fairly recent sort of human occupation.
On the other hand, I may be splitting semantic hairs here. I just think any regulation of the Internet of Things is probably more of an ecosystem management problem dealing with a whole new class of life-form than one dealing with a single organism or robot.
On the gripping hand, it could be a limitation to the metaphors since this ecosystem will be one where the nervous systems are networked together, yet can still function independently of each other and be reprogrammed, or reprogram themselves, without necessarily disrupting the entire ecosystem…
The most interesting part of the article, IMHO, is where he discusses a phase change in the WSW. Computers and robotics were supposed to make life easier and give us more leisure time, but if anything they’ve done the opposite; though they’ve empowered us in many new ways, I doubt many people would say they’ve reduced our workload. Perhaps the WSW will finally be able to fulfill the promise of computers as work-saving devices.
