Monthly Archives: June 2012

Reflections on an Open Internet of Things

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Last weekend I attended the Open Internet of Things Assembly here in London. You can read more comprehensive accounts of the weekend here. The purpose was to collaboratively draft a set of recommendations/standards/criteria to establish what it takes to be ‘open’ in the emerging ‘Internet of Things’. This vague term describes an emerging reality where our bodies, homes, cities and environment bristle with devices and sensors interacting with each other over the internet.

A huge amount of data is currently collected through traditional internet use – searches, clicks, purchases. The proliferation of internet-connected objects envisaged by Internet-of-Things enthusiasts would make the current ‘data deluge’ seem insignificant by comparison.

At this stage, asking what an Internet of Things is for would be a bit like travelling back to 1990 to ask Tim Berners-Lee what the World Wide Web was ‘for’. It’s just not clear yet. Like the web, it probably has some great uses, and some not so great ones. And, like the web, much of its positive potential probably depends on it being ‘open’. This means that anyone can participate, both at the level of infrastructure – connecting ‘things’ to the internet, and at the level of data – utilising the flows of data that emerge from that infrastructure.

The final document we came up with which attempts to define what it takes to be ‘open’ in the internet of things is available here. A number of salient points arose for me over the course of the weekend.

When it comes to questions of rights, privacy and control, we can all agree that there is an important distinction to be made between personal and non-personal data. What also emerged over the weekend for me were the shades of grey between this apparently clear-cut distinction. Saturday morning’s discussions were divided into four categories – the body, the home, the city, and the environment – which I think are spread relatively evenly across the spectrum between personal and non-personal.

Some language emerged to describe these differences – notably, the idea of a ‘data subject’ as someone who the data is ‘about’. Whilst helpful, this term also points to further complexities. Data about one person at one time can later be mined or combined with other data sets to yield data about somebody else. I used to work at a start-up which analysed an individual’s phone call data to reveal insights into their productivity. We quickly realised that when it comes to interpersonal connections, data about you is inextricably linked to data about other people – and this gets worse the more data you have. This renders any straightforward analysis of personal vs. non-personal data inadequate.

During a session on privacy and control, we considered whether the right to individual anonymity in public data sets is technologically realistic. Cambridge computer scientist Ross Anderson‘s work concludes that absolute anonymity is impossible – datasets can always be mined and ‘triangulated’ with others to reveal individual identities. It is only possible to increase or decrease the costs of de-anonymisation. Perhaps the best that can be said is that it is incumbent on those who publicly publish data to make efforts to limit personal identification.

Unlike its current geographically-untethered incarnation, the internet of things will be bound to the physical spaces in which its ‘things’ are embedded. This means we need to reconsider the meaning of and distinction between public and private space. Adam Greenfield spoke of the need for a ‘jurisprudence of open public objects’. Who has stewardship over ‘things’ embedded in public spaces? Do owners of private property have exclusive jurisdiction over the operation of the ‘things’ embedded on it, or do the owners of the thing have some say? And do the ‘data subjects’, who may be distinct from the first two parties, have a say? Mark Lizar pointed out that under existing U.S. law, you can mount a CCTV camera on your roof, pointed at your neighbours back garden (but any footage you capture is not admissible in court). Situations like this are pretty rare right now but will be part and parcel of the internet of things.

I came away thinking that the internet of things will be both wonderful and terrible, but I’m hopeful that the good people involved in this event can tip the balance towards the former and away from the latter.

Libertarian Floating Islands

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The philosopher Immanuel Kant once said that if the world were an infinite plane, then all the problems of political philosophy would be solved. If one citizen disagreed with the way his society were run, he could pack up and start a new one over there. In reality, we’re stuck with this spherical earth, and if you keep re-locating over there, eventually you’ll end up back here, to face whatever it is you were trying to get away from in the first place. So it looks like we’re stuck with each other, and the challenge of modern society is to find a compromise.

One thing Kant probably didn’t imagine is that in the 21st century, we would spot an opportunity for a new over there. Last week was the third annual conference on Seasteading. The Seasteading movement aims to create small floating cities in international waters. They envision experimental societies, intentionally-formed communities free from the regulation of national governments and the influence of social mores.

In reality, the most serious interest in seasteading has come from rich venture capitalists. Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of paypal and noted libertarian, donated $500,000 to the Seasteading Institute in 2005. As a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Thiel knows first-hand the downsides of government regulation. Thiel has seed-funded a Seastead off the shore of California, which will provide day trips to the mainland and promises to get around the restrictive work visa system, allowing the unrestricted flow of international capital and labour.

But for some, seasteading is more than just a legal hack. It’s an opportunity to apply the scientific method to society; each seastead an experiment to test an economic or political idea. Do financial transactions taxes really chill innovation? What are the consequences of zero welfare provision? How about if we legalise all drugs? Policies which would be impossible in a large democracy with a divided citizenry become possible in smaller communities of like-minded individuals.

So it is no surprise that seasteading is popular amongst libertarians like Thiel. And libertarian seasteads may indeed prove highly successful. But to see them as experiments in the ‘science’ of Politics is a rather dangerous mistake. Such ‘experiments’ have flawed validity; the citizenry of libertarian seasteads would end up a selective group blessed with talents and riches, who spend at least as much of their resources keeping the wrong people out, as letting the right people in.

Thiel criticises the US government immigration policy, as it prevents skilled foreign programmers from working in Silicon Valley. But the libertarian view of immigration has an ironic nuance. On the one hand, they often advocate open borders, arguing – admirably, if unrealistically – that no government should interfere with an individual’s freedom to roam the world as he wishes. On the other hand, in a libertarian society, where private property is absolute and everything is privatised, undesirable immigrants would have the same rights as trespassers, i.e. none. Some Seasteaders, fearful of climate change, have even begun building self-sustainable floating islands, impenetrable to climate refugees. Those foreign programmers on Silicon Island may be welcomed, but only at their host’s discretion. The poor, the destitute, the dispossessed, and the sick need not apply. The taxpayers on the mainland who funded the Seasteaders’ education can also forget about getting anything back.

Libertarian seasteads will be the preserve of the rich, and cut free from the draining demands of the rest of society they may well thrive. But this would hardly be a lesson for the rest of us. Those of us who know that the earth is not an infinite plane, also know that the challenge of building a good society means caring for all. The success of selective libertarian islands would constitute the failure of humanity to work together for an equitable future in a prosperous world.