Architecture of participation : the realization of the Semantic Web, and Internet OS

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-68).The Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) is becoming an integral part of our daily life and touching every part of the society around the world including both well-developed and developing countries. The simple technology and genuine intention of the original WWW, which is to help researchers share and exchange information and data across incompatible platforms and systems, have evolved into something larger and beyond what one could conceive. While WWW has reached the critical mass, many limitations are uncovered. To address the limitations, the development of its extension, the Semantic Web, has been underway for more than five years by the inventor of WWW, Tim Berners-Lee, and the technical community. Yet, no significant impact has been made. Its awareness by the public is surprisingly and unfortunately low. This thesis will review the development effort of the Semantic Web, examine its progress which appears lagging compared to WWW, and propose a promising business model to accelerate its adoption path.by Shelley Lau.S.M

Toolkit support for interactive projected displays

Interactive projected displays are an emerging class of computer interface with the potential to transform interactions with surfaces in physical environments. They distinguish themselves from other visual output technologies, for instance LCD screens, by overlaying content onto the physical world. They can appear, disappear, and reconfigure themselves to suit a range of application scenarios, physical settings, and user needs. These properties have attracted significant academic research interest, yet the surrounding technical challenges and lack of application developer tools limit adoption to those with advanced technical skills. These barriers prevent people with different expertise from engaging, iteratively evaluating deployments, and thus building a strong community understanding of the technology in context. We argue that creating and deploying interactive projected displays should take hours, not weeks. This thesis addresses these difficulties through the construction of a toolkit that effectively facilitates user innovation with interactive projected displays. The toolkit’s design is informed by a review of related work and a series of in-depth research probes that study different application scenarios. These findings result in toolkit requirements that are then integrated into a cohesive design and implementation. This implementation is evaluated to determine its strengths, limitations, and effectiveness at facilitating the development of applied interactive projected displays. The toolkit is released to support users in the real-world and its adoption studied. The findings describe a range of real application scenarios, case studies, and increase academic understanding of applied interactive projected display toolkits. By significantly lowering the complexity, time, and skills required to develop and deploy interactive projected displays, a diverse community of over 2,000 individual users have applied the toolkit to their own projects. Widespread adoption beyond the computer-science academic community will continue to stimulate an exciting new wave of interactive projected display applications that transfer computing functionality into physical spaces

Searching the real world using stationary and mobile object detection

This thesis investigates a new form of search engine, which enables the user to search for objects in the real world, just like traditional search engines locate resources on the Internet. A search engine for the real world is a step towards an Internet of Things, where real-world objects become visible to computer systems. In order to being nonintrusive, the tracking of objects is done using visual object detection. It is examined whether instrumenting the environment or instrumenting the user is more convenient in order to ubiquitously integrate a real-world search-engine into the daily life of a user. To explore those questions, two prototypes are developed and two user studies are conducted. A stationary prototype called Antonius, which instruments the environment, is built. It implements a web-based frontend and a two-dimensional map for representing the location of real-world objects. As a result of the user study, a second mobile prototype called mobile Antonius is built, which instruments the user instead of the environment. It additionally implements a 3D model of the surveyed area to represent the location of sought objects. The results introduce three categories of users represented as personas, which outline the participants' thoughts. Although a visual object detection-based real-world search engine decreases the user's privacy, the user study showed that people are still willing to use such a system for the benefit of never losing an object again. As a result of this research, the mobile system is found to be more convenient regarding privacy and intrusiveness. As well as providing a useful service, the results reveal many promising application areas in personalization, targeting and ubiquitous computing.Diese Diplomarbeit untersucht eine neue Art von Suchmaschine, die einem Benutzer ermöglicht, Objekte in der realen Welt zu suchen, genauso wie traditionelle Suchmaschinen Ressourcen im Internet finden. Eine Suchmaschine für die reale Welt ist ein Schritt in Richtung Internet of Things, in dem reale Objekte für einen Computer sichtbar werden. Um unaufdringlich zu sein, wird die Erkennung der Objekte mit Hilfe von visueller Objekterkennung durchgeführt. Es wird untersucht, ob ein Ausstatten der Umgebung oder des Benutzers praktischer ist um eine Suchmaschine für die reale Welt allgegenwärtig in den Alltag eines Benutzers zu integrieren. Um diese Fragen zu untersuchen werden zwei Prototypen entwickelt und zwei Benutzerstudien durchgeführt. Es wird ein stationärer Prototyp namens Antonius erstellt, der die Umgebung instrumentiert. Er implementiert ein webbasiertes Frontend und eine zweidimensionale Karte um die Position eines realen Objekts darzustellen. In Folge der Benutzerstudie wird ein zweiter mobiler Prototyp erstellt, der anstatt der Umgebung den Benutzer ausstattet. Außerdem implementiert er ein 3D-Modell der überwachten Umgebung um die Position der gesuchten Objekte anzuzeigen. Die Ergebnisse stellen drei Benutzerkategorien vor, die als Personas dargestellt werden und dadurch die Meinungen der Teilnehmer zusammenfassend gruppieren. Obwohl eine visuelle objekterkennungsbasierte Suchmaschine für die reale Welt in die Privatsphäre eines Benutzers eindringt, würden Leute trotzdem ein derartiges System benutzen um ein Objekt nie wieder zu verlieren. Diese Arbeit zeigt, dass ein mobiles System angenehmer bezüglich Privatsphäre und Aufdringlichkeit empfunden wird. Neben der Bereitstellung eines nützlichen Dienstes zeigen die Resultate dieser Diplomarbeit einige vielversprechende Anwendungsgebiete in Personalisierung, Targeting und Ubiquitous Computing auf

Internet of Things From Hype to Reality

The Internet of Things (IoT) has gained significant mindshare, let alone attention, in academia and the industry especially over the past few years. The reasons behind this interest are the potential capabilities that IoT promises to offer. On the personal level, it paints a picture of a future world where all the things in our ambient environment are connected to the Internet and seamlessly communicate with each other to operate intelligently. The ultimate goal is to enable objects around us to efficiently sense our surroundings, inexpensively communicate, and ultimately create a better environment for us: one where everyday objects act based on what we need and like without explicit instructions

Modern Socio-Technical Perspectives on Privacy

This open access book provides researchers and professionals with a foundational understanding of online privacy as well as insight into the socio-technical privacy issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems, covering several modern topics (e.g., privacy in social media, IoT) and underexplored areas (e.g., privacy accessibility, privacy for vulnerable populations, cross-cultural privacy). The book is structured in four parts, which follow after an introduction to privacy on both a technical and social level: Privacy Theory and Methods covers a range of theoretical lenses through which one can view the concept of privacy. The chapters in this part relate to modern privacy phenomena, thus emphasizing its relevance to our digital, networked lives. Next, Domains covers a number of areas in which privacy concerns and implications are particularly salient, including among others social media, healthcare, smart cities, wearable IT, and trackers. The Audiences section then highlights audiences that have traditionally been ignored when creating privacy-preserving experiences: people from other (non-Western) cultures, people with accessibility needs, adolescents, and people who are underrepresented in terms of their race, class, gender or sexual identity, religion or some combination. Finally, the chapters in Moving Forward outline approaches to privacy that move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions, explore ethical considerations, and describe the regulatory landscape that governs privacy through laws and policies. Perhaps even more so than the other chapters in this book, these chapters are forward-looking by using current personalized, ethical and legal approaches as a starting point for re-conceptualizations of privacy to serve the modern technological landscape. The book’s primary goal is to inform IT students, researchers, and professionals about both the fundamentals of online privacy and the issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems. Lecturers or teacherscan assign (parts of) the book for a “professional issues” course. IT professionals may select chapters covering domains and audiences relevant to their field of work, as well as the Moving Forward chapters that cover ethical and legal aspects. Academicswho are interested in studying privacy or privacy-related topics will find a broad introduction in both technical and social aspects