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Public Things Network

Geolocated public goods which create a ‘share economy’ commons


Date
2025

Location
Hangaram Design Museum
Seoul, South Korea

Team
Sara Dean
Benner Boswell
Chris Hamamoto

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Public Things Network is a new experiment in the 'share economy', mapping public furniture, tools, and objects in real-time as they move through the city. These collective, public things elicit shared experience and joyful gatherings, and they imagine the future of the 'smart city' as a space of distributed and responsive systems living outside of the structures of capitalism and private ownership.

Public Things Network is simultaneously hi-tech and lo-tech -- digital and physical. Physically, it is a collection of colorful and whimsical tools, toys, and furniture. They invite you to play with them, use them, and gather and disperse them to where they're desired. Digitally, the objects are tracked in real-time as they move, creating an on-demand map of un-ownable things which can be found and used on-demand.

This piece was shown as part of ISEA 2025 in Seoul.




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