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 Future of the Internet III

Presents survey results on technology experts' predictions on the Internet's social, political, and economic impact as of 2020, including its effects on integrity and tolerance, intellectual property law, and the division between personal and work lives

How can SMEs benefit from big data? Challenges and a path forward

Big data is big news, and large companies in all sectors are making significant advances in their customer relations, product selection and development and consequent profitability through using this valuable commodity. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have proved themselves to be slow adopters of the new technology of big data analytics and are in danger of being left behind. In Europe, SMEs are a vital part of the economy, and the challenges they encounter need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. This paper identifies barriers to SME uptake of big data analytics and recognises their complex challenge to all stakeholders, including national and international policy makers, IT, business management and data science communities. The paper proposes a big data maturity model for SMEs as a first step towards an SME roadmap to data analytics. It considers the ‘state-of-the-art’ of IT with respect to usability and usefulness for SMEs and discusses how SMEs can overcome the barriers preventing them from adopting existing solutions. The paper then considers management perspectives and the role of maturity models in enhancing and structuring the adoption of data analytics in an organisation. The history of total quality management is reviewed to inform the core aspects of implanting a new paradigm. The paper concludes with recommendations to help SMEs develop their big data capability and enable them to continue as the engines of European industrial and business success. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Technology, governance, and a sustainability model for small and medium-sized towns in Europe

New and cutting-edge technologies causing deep changes in societies, playing the role of game modifiers, and having a significant impact on global markets in small and medium-sized towns in Europe (SMSTEs) are the focus of this research. In this context, an analysis was carried out to identify the main dimensions of a model for promoting innovation in SMSTEs. The literature review on the main dimensions boosting the innovation in SMSTEs and the methodological approach was the application of a survey directed to experts on this issue. The findings from the literature review reflect that technologies, governance, and sustainability dimensions are enablers of SMSTEs’ innovation, and based on the results of the survey, a model was implemented to boost innovation, being this the major add-on of this research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Designing Without Privacy

In Privacy on the Ground, the law and information scholars Kenneth Bamberger and Deirdre Mulligan showed that empowered chief privacy officers (CPOs) are pushing their companies to take consumer privacy seriously, integrating privacy into the designs of new technologies. But their work was just the beginning of a larger research agenda. CPOs may set policies at the top, but they alone cannot embed robust privacy norms into the corporate ethos, practice, and routine. As such, if we want the mobile apps, websites, robots, and smart devices we use to respect our privacy, we need to institutionalize privacy throughout the corporations that make them. In particular, privacy must be a priority among those actually doing the work of design on the ground — namely, engineers, computer programmers, and other technologists. This Article presents findings from an ethnographic study of how, if at all, technologists doing the work of technology product design think about privacy, integrate privacy into their work, and consider user needs in the design process. It also looks at how attorneys at private firms draft privacy notices for their clients. Based on these findings, this Article presents a narrative running in parallel to the one described by Bamberger and Mulligan. This alternative account, where privacy is narrow, limited, and barely factoring into design, helps explain why so many products seem to ignore our privacy expectations. The Article then proposes a framework for understanding how factors both exogenous (theory and law) and endogenous (corporate structure and individual cognitive frames and experience) to the corporation prevent the CPOs’ robust privacy norms from diffusing throughout technology companies and the industry as a whole. This framework also helps elucidate how reforms at every level — theory, law, organization, and individual experience — can incentivize companies to take privacy seriously, enhance organizational learning, and eliminate the cognitive biases that lead to discrimination in design

Encouraging Privacy-Aware Smartphone App Installation: Finding out what the Technically-Adept Do

Smartphone apps can harvest very personal details from the phone with ease. This is a particular privacy concern. Unthinking installation of untrustworthy apps constitutes risky behaviour. This could be due to poor awareness or a lack of knowhow: knowledge of how to go about protecting privacy. It seems that Smartphone owners proceed with installation, ignoring any misgivings they might have, and thereby irretrievably sacrifice their privacy