The clever folks at Botanicalls finally have an answer to the question burning up the blogosphere: is there anything in the world that can’t Twitter?  The answer apparently, is a resounding no, at least in the social sphere of houseplants and the humans with too much on their hands who care for them. Yes, just when you thought it was safe to leave the house, your plant calls looking for a little love:  

According the website, “Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What’s up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates that reach you anywhere in the world. When your plant needs water, it will Twitter to let you know… When people phone the plants, the plants orient callers to their habits and characteristics.”  

Uh-huh.

Out of curiosity, I call the listed Botanicalls phone number and punch in a 3-digit code from the menu.  #005 connects me to the Scented Geranium, which says in a sexy-pay-per-minute kind of voice that it’s a native of South Africa and “touching me will release my fabulous scent.”

I hang up, feeling kinda dirty.

What kind of world do we live in that requires we devote emotional energy to houseplants?  A world filled with the slippery slope of spime.  It starts with an emotionally needy plant, or a Nabaztag rabbit that just needs a hug.  Next thing you know you’re trying to broker a peace accord between the broom and the floor mop.

Ah, the glorious (future) world of spime.

Twittering plants and emotionally fragile Nabaztags have been on my mind this week as I’ve been writing a scenario for my upcoming SXSW talk that explores the relationship between social technologies and metadata.  In a world characterized by info-glut, how will social technologies help us navigate, control and leverage the mountains of metadata that surround us?  How will they help us when spime starts to spam?

Designers, for better or worse, are on the frontline as the physical and digital worlds collide. Their burden is to design responsibly, to resist the urge to propagate the world with more Useless Stuff Embedded with Useless Data. How can this be achieved? Minus a full-blown design manifesto (for now), I offer instead The First Rule of Spime Design, which says: Spime Shall Be Socially Useful. To determine whether the blogject meets this criteria, consider the QVC test: if it has the potential (even the most distant or remote) to one day appear on a QVC television special - then don’t make it.  Put the glue gun down and walk away. This is the Purple Ketchup rule, which is another way of saying: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Because once houseplants start to Twitter, soon they just might Pownce. 

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