Bruce Sterling Bruce Sterling in his lovely book Shaping Things coined (invented?) the concept of a SPIME object:

Objects trackable through SPace and tIME – every object can be queried and has a unique history.

It is a manufactured objects whose informational support is so overwhelmingly extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial information system

SPIMEs begin and end as data
They are Sustainable, enhanceable, uniquely identifiable, re-coverable
They are Eminently data-mineable.

Recently I found the Twine announced in my Twitter Stream:

Twine is the simplest possible way to get the objects in your life texting, tweeting or emailing. A durable 2.5" square provides WiFi connectivity, internal and external sensors, and two AAA batteries that keep it running for months. A simple web app allows to you quickly set up your Twine with human-friendly rules — no programming needed. And if you're more adventurous, you can connect your own sensors and use HTTP to have Twine send data to your own app.

The result? Your plant (or any other object you may choose) can talk to you or anyone else that it may need to, for example meet Pothos the plant

For more on this see
Peter Morville’s Semantic Studio