They resemble a line of ants transporting food back to a colony. Some carry rolls of tape, others clutch massive reams of butcher paper and a select few are the keeper of the scissors.

Over a 100 people follow me out of the National Stadium located in Warsaw. We’re on a collective mission. Over the course of 90 minutes, the group will create a massive crime scene complete with victims, killers and motives. Together they will transform into a collaborative Sherlock Holmes as they scour through clues and attempt not to containment their crime scenes.

Welcome to Sherlock Holmes & the Internet of Things, a prototype of the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab that experiments with shifts in authorship and ownership of stories while exploring the ethical and political implications of IoT (Internet of Things). For the last 10 months, Nick Fortugno and myself have staged meetups throughout NYC. A steady stream of storytellers, game designers, hackers, makers and fans of Sherlock Holmes have flowed through the meetups, in an attempt to reimagine the works of Sir Arthur C. Doyle. From a few hours to full day sessions - we’ve designed, built and prototyped the foundation that will be used to stage a series of connected crimes scenes around the world later this fall.

By the end of 2015, it is anticipated that there will be over 1.5 trillion sensors in the world. Everything from cars to household appliances to everyday objects are rapidly connecting to networks. The Internet of Things is positioned to be the largest deployment of connected devices, dwarfing PCs, tablets and smartphones combined. The opportunity this presents for laying storytelling over the physical world is exciting. Stories that can aid the discovery, personalization and connection of people to places and things. With any new emergent form of storytelling comes the need for a grammar. So what will a 21st Century re-write look like?

Test, Break & Repeat

We’ve run 15 prototypes in 10 countries since the project started last September and a number of design principals have emerged.