Mechstreams - when machines start lifestreaming with us

Ok, so lifestreaming is the rage of '08, what with SocialThing! and Friendfeed and all similar services hogging all the attention.

But I also see something that's been bubbling under the surface that I call 'mechstreams'. I see machines edging in as equals in our lifestreaming services, sending out streams of data indicating what they are up to or thinking or what. And I don't mean info alerts like weather or news, but info about what is going on.

This is not new, really, but I think the time is right for these things to mix with real lifestreams.

Examples:

• Tom Armitage hooked up the Tower Bridge to Twitter so that it can say 'What am I doing?' every time it goes up or down.
• I heard yesterday from Jan Chipchase of a teapot that says when it's boiling water. In this case, it's an unobtrusive tool to keep an eye on elderly folks - if the teapot is being used, then the old folks are doing fine.

I think this is fine and dandy in this day and age of the re-birth (again) of ubicomp and semweb (both of which I have been waiting to bloom for a very very long time).

So, where do you see this going? Tom Armitage gushed about this about a year ago. Have things really developed further?

[PS: In the course of actually slowing down to write this post, I keep finding more discussion of this topic. The inestimable Julian Bleecker used the term 'blogject' for objects that blog. He wrote up a minifesto 2 years ago. Krap, I need to get out more. Some days I feel like Rip van Winkle waking up and missing a huge chunk of the discussion.]