This post is philosophical and doesn’t necessarily carry solutions to the problems it presents. I know it’s not my usual kind of writing, but hey, it’s better to get ideas out there than it is to keep them to yourself. Tread carefully.

Brian Oberkirch just posted about the flow of information and where we’re heading to by connecting the web to the objects we carry with us daily. This topic has been on my mind since when I first heard of the Chumby about 2 years ago. Connected devices like the chumby, stuff by Ambient Devices (that I’ve never seen live, unfortunately), the iPhone and Arduino bring us closer to data that we generally pay little attention to.

These days the web isn’t something we’re always plugged into or connected to. We just tap into it when we want information – still some of us do it more than others. The web is leaking into the real world (as Matt Webb hinted at in his Movement presentation) through connected devices and services like Twitter, Dopplr (or Birdie, which we’re building around here – more on it later, promise).

There’s still barriers between now and a future where the online world and the real blend into each other completely. Brian mentions some of the problems we’re solving now like identity and usability. A lot needs to happen in the interaction world as well. The way we connect to the cloud (cloud being online data) is still open, vastly unexplored territory. We’re building devices that get us closer to the data, but I keep feeling like our use of screen-based media is often limiting. We’ll see a lot more of products like BUG labs than we will of services in the future.

My guess is we’ll have specialized devices connected to specific bits of data – much like we use our cellphones to connect to GSM networks and call people. What those will be and how they’ll look is still unknown, but it’s an exciting time to be working on platforms, devices and the web.