Philip Sheldrake

Tag: iot (page 1 of 1)

9 April 2015 / 0 Comments

Different kinds of privacy, empowerment and autonomy – centralized versus decentralized

qs-watch[Originally posted to the hi:project blog.]

In an article in the Guardian last week, Professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland mooted the potential for Google to cleave in two, with one part dedicated to providing a regulated bank-like service for data. Pentland directs the MIT Human Dynamics Lab and co-leads both the Big Data and the Personal Data and Privacy initiatives of the World Economic Forum, and I'm surprised how often his name crops up in my hi:project related research, yet I find it difficult to reconcile his observation here with his fluency in the power of decentralized networks:

Social physics strongly suggest that the [Adam Smith’s] invisible hand is more due to trust, cooperation and robustness properties of the person-to-person network of exchanges than it is due to any magic in the workings of the market. If we want to have a fair, stable society, we need to look to the network of exchanges between people, and not to market competition.

Pentland continues under the heading: How can we move from a market-centric to a human-centric society? Read more

5 May 2010 / 0 Comments

Chairing the Internet of Things mashup

The BCS, Chartered Institute for IT, hosted the Mashup Event in London last night, an event focused on the Internet of Things. As chair I knew it was important to establish boundaries for the evening's discussion, but the problem is... there is simply no sector or discipline that is or will be left untouched by the Internet of Things.

Fortunately, I could lean on an expert panel to shoulder the burden of picking out the topics, although I was first to take a stab at defining the topic: a network of objects beyond the 'usual' including:

  • the device containing electronics in order to fulfil its primary function (eg, washing machine, car, aircon unit)
  • the electrical device traditionally absent of sophisticated electronics (eg, lighting, heating, power distribution)
  • non-electrical objects (eg, food and drink packages, animals, clothing); and
  • environmental sensors (eg, for variables such as temperature, heat and moisture).

David Orban opened the evening in ten minutes with a fast, furious, compelling and fascinating slide stack. He could have banged us over the head with ten minutes about WideTag, but preferred to situate his company's endeavours in the bigger picture. Videos from tonight will go up on the Mashup Event website, but if you can't wait, here's a video of David in action at Momo Amsterdam a month ago.

Read more