The Nabaztag (Armenian for ‘hare’ which also describes the device’s rabbit-like form) was invented by Rafi Haladjian and Olivier Mével in France in 2005 and was manufactured by Violet. It is a device with an embedded computer and wireless network connection, motorised ears, RGB LEDS, and a speaker that allow the device to emit short messages. It was released as one of the first objects in the Internet of Things ‘smart’ ecosystem, and enabled users to programme the device to their own needs and desires.

The independently controlled ears and lights (named ‘LapinLEDs’) function as the indicators of data streams which could be coded to pull remote data such as weather, stock prices or even football scores. Nabaztag, as an early ‘Internet of Things’ device, was a notable and influential object during this period of rapid innovation,

The Nabaztag was designed to not replicate bulky or uninviting tech devices that wold clutter a user’s life. Instead, this friendly, smiling device was created to live at home as an interactive, internet enabled companion. It is also an example of what Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown call ‘calm technology’ (1996), the idea of displaying information through devices that catch attention only when necessary and often by means other than screens.
Five thousand Nabaztag devices were sold on the first release in 2005, and the product immediately gained cult popularity, inspiring a 100-rabbit opera performance by Antoine Schmitt and Jean-Jacques Birgé in 2006, and even a set of stamps. The devices were connected through Nabaztag’s central infrastructure, which also enabled individual rabbits to be connected to each other. This ultimately led to the first collapse of the Nabaztag system (a fundamental issue that has plagued the legacy of all IoT devices). In December 2006, demand generated by rabbits sold as Christmas gifts caused the France-based servers to crash and all Nabaztags switching off. A crash occurred again two years later in 2008 when a major server migration caused all devices to malfunction. In 2009, after years of technical difficulty, Violet, who operated Nabaztag’s servers alongside manufacturing them, filed for bankruptcy, leading to thousands of first-generation devices to abruptly shut down.

In 2010, videogame developer Mindscape bought Violet, and released a second and third generation of the device, named Karotz. This version was short-lived, with production ceasing in 2011 with a total of 150,000 having been sold. The source code was, however, released to devoted communities.

Nabaztag’s legacy, as an early IoT object, has lived on long past its commercial release. In 2018, during Maker Faire Paris, Olivier Mével, the original creator of the device, offered to resurrect ‘dead’ objects still kept in people’s homes, via an easy to install open-source kit that removed the need to have a centrally located server for the device to function. Several other maker and hacker communities have generated similar efforts to bring the object back to life, through devices such as the inexpensive Raspberry Pi. The Nabaztag is indicative both of early Internet of Things ambitions and of the then new challenges of infrastructural vulnerabilities, such as the inability to scale with demand leading to system collapse and the resultant shutdown of thousands of devices.

This object joins the V&A’s growing examination of the history of the Internet of Things and connected objects, including the Amazon Echo (CD.11:1 to 8-2020), the Nest smart Thermostat (CD.36:1 to 10-2014), Google Glass wearable glasses (CD.57:1 to 3-2014 ) and Snap smart spectacles (CD.13:1 to 6-2018). It contributes to building knowledge of a history of different centres of innovation in this field away from Silicon Valley (US) and Silicon Roundabout (UK), and points to France’s notable contribution to digital design which influenced the UK’s Internet of Things scene in the mid to late 2000’s.