Adam Curtis’ documentary series “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” mentioned the work of Howard Odum. Odum was an ecologist who is known for making analogies between ecosystems and electrical, mechanical, acoustical, magnetic and electronic systems.
I’m interested in the analogy Odum made between ecosystems and Ohm’s law. Odum set up analogies between different natural resources/processes and elements of an electrical circuit. He then diagrammed the flow of energy through ecosystems as electrical schematics.
To do this, Odum devised an Energy Systems Language or “Energese, Energy Circuit Language and Generic Systems Symbols” that equated symbols from electrical schematics to ecological processes. For Odum, this translation of an ecosystem to an electrical circuit was an attempt to uncover some general principles of how ecosystems work.
Images via Wikipedia
Relating this back to my thesis:
The Internet of Things uses physical computing to sense and collect data on the world around us. Odum’s method is essentially using physical computing to model the world around us.
Is it possible that Odum’s method paints a more robust picture of our world than individual connected devices ever could? Could devising a thesis project that makes an analogy between the Internet of Things and Odum’s Energy Systems Language uncover shortcoming in either methodology?
I think it would be interesting to build out one of his models with actual physical computing parts.
Information in this post was learned from these two Wikipedia entries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_T._Odum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Systems_Language