Internet of Things concept for a Social Responsibility. Abstract: The paper deals with implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) concept for development of Social Responsibility. IoT as pan-communication technology can to increase persons and group awareness, to change modus operandi with serious pervasive games. Furthermore, IoT have great potential to manage complexity by re (constructing) systems for a functioning largely without human intervention.
Individuals ability to active social response depends on various circumstances of person’s internal and external world (umwelt, mitwelt, eigenwelt). From complex spectrum of these influences we’ll consider A. human awareness, opportunities for relevant data, information and knowledge acquisition (afferent streams); B. Modus operandi forming (efferent streams), which we’ll examine in terms of new pan-communication technologies.
The Internet of Things (IoT) ontological shift arises from several trends:
1. Artifacts acquire memory (RFID…);
2. Artifacts acquire sensing (Wireless Sensor Networks…);
3. Artifacts acquire thinking (Ubiquitous, pervasive computing…);
4. Artifacts acquire communication with persons, systems and each other (WiFi, Mobile Internet, RFID, Augmented Reality, Sensors, GPS…).
The Internet of Things project declare our new possibility to (inter)connect «6А»- Anyone, Anything, Anytime, Any place, Any service, Any network.
So the Internet of Things (IoT) concept is a vision in which persons, groups, objects, systems etc. will be strongly connected, and it touches profoundly all aspects of society. To reflect on such a vast subject, it must be broken down in different layers: a value chain, a service an application layer, the smart city concept and a global layer. The first layer affects industry and end-users, the second affects individuals and business models, the third affects planning and infrastructure, the fourth affects how decision making processes and resources will be divided on the planet.
“When objects can both sense the environment and communicate, they become tools for understanding complexity and responding to it swiftly. What’s revolutionary in all this is that these physical information systems are now beginning to be deployed, and some of them even work largely without human intervention.” (Chui, 2010).
Internet of Things (IoT) could be defined as a dynamic global network infrastructure with self configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual ‘things’ have identities, physical attributes, and virtual personalities and use intelligent interfaces, and are seamlessly integrated into the information network. (Sundmaeker, 2010).
The social responsibility level depends on very complex interconnections and inter-representations (Portugali, 2002) of material, energy, psychological, intersubjective and other dimensions of our hybrid Actor–Network (Latour, 2005) Environments. Some crucial elements of such a system can be improved in Social Responsibility context by IoT tools and other instruments of hybrid reality and pan-communication technologies. For example:
- Increase of persons and groups awareness through transparency of «online» information, relating to our lifeworld (accessibility of neibourghood sensor networks data streams…), visualization of concrete individual actions system effects…;
- Modus operandi changing by thematic serious games, including pervasive (Montola, 2007) city games on real landscapes with RFID, AR, Sensors, Self-Tracking etc. usage.
How to implement our new abilities to distant perception, interaction, communication with artifacts and other persons by web of things, wireless body area networks (WBAN) etc.? How to create rich participatory, personalized, actually Alive and Smart Environments? - We can construct certain layer of city landscape reality, representing certain mode of our corporeality. In other words a social space becomes literally a body of Other. Such interactive area we call Geo Sapiens. In a sense of Geo Sapiens, Michel Foucault’s Technologies of the Self lead to public spaces specific design approach. In these systems more strong recursions of emergent interfaces (body/ consciousness/web/environment/other/body…) deepen individuals understanding of interdependence and social responsibility holism.
In our presentation we’ll try to explicit these thesis’s and to compare few scenarios of Geo Sapiens future vision. We actually want our cities to become more tender and sensitive.
References
Chui, M. & others. (2010). The Internet of Things. McKinsey & Company.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Montola, M. & others. (2007). Integrated Project on pervasive Gaming. Brussels: Europian Comission.
Portugali J. (2002). The Seven Basic Propositions of SIRN (Synergetic Inter-Representation Networks). Nonlinear Phenomena in Complex Systems. 428-444.
Sundmaeker, H. & others. (2010). Vision and Challenges for Realising the Internet of Things. Brussels: Europian Comission.
About the Authors
Vladimir I. Arshinov, prof.
Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Head of Department for Interdisciplinary Problems of the Scientific and Technological Development.
Vadim V. Chekletsov
Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Department for Interdisciplinary Problems of the Scientific and Technological Development, researcher;
EU Internet of Thing Council, member
Smart Environment Socio-Lab, founder