The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025

This report is the latest research report in a sustained effort throughout 2014 by the Pew Research Center Internet Project to mark the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-LeeThis current report is an analysis of opinions about the likely expansion of the Internet of Things (sometimes called the Cloud of Things), a catchall phrase for the array of devices, appliances, vehicles, wearable material, and sensor-laden parts of the environment that connect to each other and feed data back and forth. It covers the over 1,600 responses that were offered specifically about our question about where the Internet of Things would stand by the year 2025. The report is the next in a series of eight Pew Research and Elon University analyses to be issued this year in which experts will share their expectations about the future of such things as privacy, cybersecurity, and net neutrality. It includes some of the best and most provocative of the predictions survey respondents made when specifically asked to share their views about the evolution of embedded and wearable computing and the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things Connectivity Binge: What are the Implications?

Despite wide concern about cyberattacks, outages and privacy violations, most experts believe the Internet of Things will continue to expand successfully the next few years, tying machines to machines and linking people to valuable resources, services and opportunities

The Design of Not-so-everyday Things: Designing for Emerging Experiences

In this paper, we explore how emerging technologies and experiences challenge previous theories and practices to grow and adopt and, thus, address new and unique challenges, such as designing across macro-level ecosystems, new devices, and interaction models that enable user control of data in an increasingly complex digital world. We discuss these topics with respect to real and future examples, the unique challenges they present, and how academia and industry must collaborate to adapt current frameworks and develop new methods to address these challenges. This partnership will ensure both parties better understand the problem space for designing emerging experiences in today\u27s digital economy. Further, this partnership enables scholars and practitioners to more effectively explore the solution space for designing novel products and developing advanced theories that help craft meaningful user experiences. Finally, we argue that the partnership between academia and industry can develop future talent and upskill current practitioners, which is paramount in successfully meeting the challenges inherent in the design of emerging technologies

Major requirements for building Smart Homes in Smart Cities based on Internet of Things technologies

The recent boom in the Internet of Things (IoT) will turn Smart Cities and Smart Homes (SH) from hype to reality. SH is the major building block for Smart Cities and have long been a dream for decades, hobbyists in the late 1970s made Home Automation (HA) possible when personal computers started invading home spaces. While SH can share most of the IoT technologies, there are unique characteristics that make SH special. From the result of a recent research survey on SH and IoT technologies, this paper defines the major requirements for building SH. Seven unique requirement recommendations are defined and classified according to the specific quality of the SH building blocks

Governance and Assessment of Future Spaces: A Discussion of Some Issues Raised by the Possibilities of Human-Machine Mergers

‘In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note; But ‘tis my heart that loves what they despise …’ 1 This sonnet and the ancient Japanese notion of wabi-sabi view aesthetics or beauty as imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. Rather than celebrating the human diversity created by our ‘imperfections’, today's society increasingly focuses on them as ‘areas for improvement’, often via a doctor’s scalpel or the latest gadget. Developments in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) promise a tomorrow where ‘errors’ or ‘deficiencies’ in an organism’s genetic and/or phenotypic makeup can be modulated, enhanced, corrected, redefined or eradicated by, for instance, networks of biological nanomachines. Upgraded organisms will be convolutions of organic parts, electronic components, microchips, and biomechanotronic devices. Humans 1.0, Humans 2.0 and transhumans will live in new fully immersive worlds (virtual reality), inhabit a modified real world (augmented reality), and exist with an altered body schema (mixed-reality). This future world could be a place of total technological convergence, where it may not be possible to ensure privacy of an individual’s thoughts. It could also be a place where people can be subjected to Social Engineering and manipulation, including the potential for viruses and malware infecting the brain or body, as well as new forms of external control of individuals by third parties. In this discussion paper, we will explore the potential privacy, security, and ethical issues raised by humanmachine mergers. The focus is on research, development and products at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence, Big Data, and smart computing. We suggest that there is a need for a more holistic approach to the assessment of technology and its governance. Additionally, we suggest that in order to determine how the law will need to respond to this particular future space, it is necessary to understand the full impacts of human-machine mergers on societies and our planet – to go beyond these three issues. Since STEMM-related activities are promising a cornucopia of future spaces, we will propose that the problems of governance and assessment require a new conception of ‘responsible research and innovation’, one that is fulfilled by our recently proposed FLE5 SH framework.2 To some extent the FLE5 SH framework can be seen as allowing the formation of a social contract, whereby all stakeholders are required to engage in a review of this wider spectrum of the possible impacts of technologies. We suggest that a Precautionary Principle approach may be of assistance in considering the impacts of technologies, remembering that especially in the context of software based systems, it is always useful to think first and bugfix later