Toys, Open Source Hardware, Littlebits.

Seems like new important technologies can often get a beach head in toys or playthings. Batteries, Energy harvesting, AI and Watson... Regardless - toys are fun.

It is said there are five proto-toys - seen from the earliest times: ball, doll (including animals), stick/stylus, string/rope/cord, musical-instrument (like wind and percussion instruments) .

Magnifying glass, magnets, and telescopes are some nice more "advanced" toys. Blocks and vehicles come along too. My personal favorites are classic construction toys.

The modern age has brought electronics and tablets as toys. Especially electronic toys and kits. Brings to mind the venerable first handhelds.

At the OHS2013 at MIT was introduced to Littlebits. They gave away a small sample kit. Very intriguing.

And the idea has gotten legs. Search for littlebits pops up many things. There is an Internet of Things connection with the cloudbit.

So it seems littlebits is becoming the Internet of Things construction toy. They want to be an app store for hardware designs with the bitlab.

Littlebits are in many ways "perfect"... though one caveat is cost (for a toy)... but it is understandable. And it leads one to think of alternatives (and a marketplace) - which has its ecosystem benefits (for littlebits and others). Might come back to that in a later blog entry.

For now thinking of ways that the deluxe Popular Science kit might be used -(sorry)- played with *grin*.