All technological standards are also social standards. Talking about Proximity, System Thinking, Affect and Cold spots.

The Architectural League published The Internet of People for a Post Oil World in 2011.

In Situated Technologies Pamphlets 8, Christian Nold and Rob van Kranenburg articulate the foundations of a future manifesto for an Internet of Things in the public interest. Nold and Kranenburg propose tangible design interventions that challenge an internet dominated by commercial tools and systems, emphasizing that people from all walks of life have to be at the table when we talk about alternate possibilities for ubiquitous computing. Through horizontally scaling grass roots efforts along with establishing social standards for governments and companies to allow cooperation, Nold and Kranenberg argue for transforming the Internet of Things into an Internet of People.

Christian Cold said: This vision of workshops is the conceptual ancestor of today’s Hack- spaces, which are loosely organized community workshops where people come together to experiment, build and share skills and ideas.

Whenever I visit my local London Hackspace, I am amazed by the variety of activities. People are laser cutting and 3D printing objects from computer games while others learn to lock pick, make cakes or hand carve a new handle for their grandfather’s wood axe. The atmosphere of these workshops is inspiring; people work with an energy that is more intense than what is typical for a hobby and it also does not feel like work.

This model of local workshops allows people to do a variety of work, some manual, some intellectual, some exciting and some less so. If we produce things in our local area, we get fulfilment from our multiple roles of manual work as well as empowering brainwork and will not need “hobbies” anymore. The Internet of People enables a vision of globally interconnected workshops that change the type of things we produce, as well as our social and cultural relations in which we do so. We don’t have to wait for major climate disasters to happen before industry will re-orientate itself. Small open source workshops already exist in most towns. The social and technical networking of these workshops will form the global backbone for open collaboration in the future Internet of People.Interconnecting in this way sounds like it might need “standards” or protocols. Who is currently doing the interconnecting and making of these standards?

Our ending reads quite utopian still, but who knows they can be instigators for a workshop?

If you think so, contact me at [email protected]

To finish and to instigate a discussion, we propose a series of indicative standards that test the waters, raise awareness and make visible the gap between where we are now and where have to go. The triple challenges of climate change, peak oil and social breakdown are coming. The question is not if, but when. Our standards are a shock therapy to the current practice of making. The sociability standards are workable and stem directly from the urgencies we have discussed. They will ensure interoperability between all the emerging actors. They require the joining of different actors that so far have not been involved in the making of standards. All technological standards are also social standards.

Proximity

? Systems that are designed by at least twenty people distributed across

the world.

? Systems that are built less than 150 miles from where the raw materials

are sourced.

? Systems that will not be deployed more than 50 miles from where

they are built.

? Systems whose components are modular and backward compatible

to allow local repair, upgrade and downgrade.

System Thinking

? Systems that fix end costs as a percentage on top of publicly available

production, transportation and disposal costs.

? Systems that communicate the break down of energy costs of pro-

duction, transport and breakdown of the product.

? Systems that automatically generate a fixed, public discussion url

for each item.

Affect

? Systems that encourage face-to-face contact.

? Systems that build mutual responsibility.

? Systems that encourage conflict.

? Systems that during their lifetime will be used by more than 5 people.

? Systems that enable strong bonds between people and the environment.

? Systems that treat resources as equals.

Cold spots

We tie the Smart Cities concept to the On-Life human-centered vision. The need to provide citizen-focused empowering visions of smart cities planning and development is very much needed, especially when a post-COVID environment requires urban growth “resets” within stringent sustainability limits. Our selected case studies describe some of these current challenges. Two novel utopian visions of technology are proposed: urban “cold spots” and “disposable identities.” The aim is to safeguard human digital rights in the digital smart urban sphere: our cherished freedom of expression, privacy, autonomy, and civic assembly. The chapter has three parts, the limits of smartness; the IoT, 5G, and 6G technology developments of cyber physical systems; and the need to choose a suitable form of identity management. Authors bring together their intradisciplinary approach.

#IoTDay2025

We are looking for collaborators, speakers and sponsors for the fifteenth anniversary of IoTDay. Gerald Santucci suggests that the European Parliament is the best location :

(https://iotday.org ) will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the prestigious IoT Day that is held every year on 9 April with multiple forms of initiatives at local and national level.

I believe this milestone in the history of IoT Days deserves the organisation of a special meet-up meeting in Brussels where the idea was born under the vision and leadership of Rob van Kranenburg . I suggest this meeting is held at European Parliament with the participation of MEPs most interested in the future of the IoT. A room with, say, 80 seats would be just great.

The IoT is no longer an extraordinary spinoff of RFID and other identification technologies, it is not either an “island” whose nature, working and impact could be debated in isolation of the whole digital world, it is actually a key subsystem of a whole industrial landscape that brings together and synergize the Internetofeverything, #ai, #LLMs, #web3, #metaverse, #naturebasedsolutions for a #naturepositiveeconomy, #disposableidentities, #ethics, g#governance (of both technology and human societies), and so forth.

Therefore, the 2025 Meet-up in Brussels will be a unique opportunity to embrace all those key technologies and principles that are pregnant of the future.

A vos marques !

#iotcouncil

Timing

One of the books that I re-read from time to time is ‘Jerusalem 1913’, by Amy Dockser Marcus. The description of the intricate processes of entitlements between the different religions in the holy places, are fascinating foremost in the fact that this is such a decentralised and distributed local affair at the time. Equally fascinating is the fact that it was a time, a specific year, where decisions were taking that fostered lines of thought and action so aligned that they became a hegemonic force to the extent the word ‘inevitable’ was forced onto anyone who tried to envisage and build alternatives. 1913 was also the year of the Arab-Syrian Congress in Paris to discuss Palestine, still under Ottoman rule (until 1917, when the British took over until they were kicked out in 1948). Amy Dockser Marcus tells of a telegram from the USA that was sent to the Congress outlining the idea of Jerusalem as a kind of federal Washington DC and lots of autonomy for the various groups on the ground, foremost Arabs and Jews.

If the Ottoman Empire, or even the nation-states that were carved out of it in the wake of World War I, had been able to allow them to find a way to express their own ethnic uniqueness, practice their religion and culture, and yet still feel part of a shared homeland and a common identity, could things have gone differently? (P.28)

That telegram got lost in the general dichotomies, and we know what happened.

Reciprocity

Sipping his tea, he looked suddenly up and asked her out of the blue if she had ever read The Chrysalids by John Wyndham? She kept gazing out of the window and shook her head. This is how it begins he whispered:

“When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city - which was strange because it began before I?even knew what a city was. But this city, clustered on the curve of a big blue bay, would come into my mind. I could see the streets, and the buildings that lined them, the waterfront, even boats in the harbour; yet,? waking, I had never seen the sea, or a boat. ...”

Once upon a time there was a little boy always doing his best, at whatever it was, she could not help thinking, and she smiled.

And did you know that in WWII the Germans – in an attempt to confuse the Allied pilots – covered large areas with nets or painted wooden structures. And one night one single RAF plane flew over the ‘village’ and dropped one wooden bomb?

Really? She was interested now. This was a beautiful moment indeed, she could clearly hear the ‘thud’ as it hit the wooden structure. And why is that such a beautiful story to you?

Well, it shows that there is such a thing as adequate response, a tailored solution to a problem and that people are capable of making rational decisions with a heart and humor.

There is a style in an act like this taking us out of our fear of living.

I mean do you recall how not so long ago we had cars on petrol and gas even as we knew how bad that was and that it was even a resource that was nearly gone from the earth?

Yes, he said, it is quite unbelievable looking back on those days. It seems like a strange dream.

And do you remember how hard it was to change that situation? It seemed as if it would never change, as long as we were in that loop of arguments that all converged in the idea that this was normal.

And also this is quite easy to explain, she sighed. René Thom, the mathematician, says that ?each creation and destruction of forms, or morphogenesis, can be described as the disappearance of the attractors that determined the forms that were current, and the replacement of those by capturing of the attractors that represent the eventual forms” (Thom, 1975, cited in Sheldrake, Rupert. The Rebirth of Nature, 1991)

The forms will not disappear before the attractors that give them their shape lose their glamour.

So that is what happened. She looked at him and smiled. The car manufacturers lost the success factors that led to the ‘car’ being their product’.

They realised their real offering was not traveling in space but traveling in time.

Food

The act of organising itself brings you tools that will help you. Then you end up using the tools. In his poem Suicide note from a Cockroach in a low income Housing Project , Pedro Pietri who after his discharge from the Army and Vietnam had affiliated himself with the Young Lords, writes:

Ever since incinerators came

into the life of the minority groups

In the old buildings the people

Were very close to everything they had

Food was never thrown away

But today everything is going

Into those incinerators

The last family that lived here

Took the incinerator

To get to the first floor

They do not live here anymore

Damn those low income housing projects

Seriously speaking

I’m seriously seeking

The exit to leave this eerie existence

My resistance is low and will not grow

The incinerator breaks the solidarity of sharing leftovers, of deciding what to throw out, what to keep, who would be pleased with this or that. Instead everything becomes meaningless, devoid of personal investments and investing in communal relationship between neighbours becomes pointless. The very act of sharing something is lost, and people grow more solitary.

Who could have believed this cause effect in an incinerator?

"In the end, campaign promises and the Young Lords’ pressure compelled local government to launch a more strategic approach to garbage collection."

Headmap

Forecasting by prototyping is a phrase of Ben Russell, the author of Headmap. We believe IoT constitutes a new ontology. Qualities and properties of citizens/end users, industry and governance will merge to form new leading actors.

Russell published Headmap Manifesto back in 1999.I remember him in my study in Ghent provoking me constantly to see if I really got the urgency and depth of what was being engineered. At some point around 2004 or 2005, he decided that he didn't want to be around what he saw coming, so he moved (or so I was told) to an Indonesian beach. I stayed on and carefully worked on the early Twitter (@robvank) and Council LinkedIn Group Next Generation Internet.

Listen to Headmap Manifesto – the utopic revolution of locative practices

Read Headmap Manifesto

New threats

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a major role in defining new threats lead by

increasing automation of the systems of systems. New & more services will take

networking in the 6th dimension populated with systems such as autonomous air

taxis, drones, satellites, aircrafts for a new demanding society. I will present - Use

cases: selected aspects where drone hacking, normally negatively tainted, can be

performed for ethical causes especially in the cyberwarfare area.? Discuss how

this can be done and illuminate technical aspects in the area of hacking drones?

Describe the challenging environment were drones, networked sensors, AI and

Internet of Things (IoT) exchange data & make decisions.

AUTONOMOUS ETHICAL HACKING

Laura Samsó Pericón*

https://www.xponential.org/xponential2023/Custom/Handout/Speaker52555_Session4456_1.pdf

Ah yes, I forgot.

Ah yes, I forgot. Here I was thinking decisions were made on the basis of data input, analytic tools and AI assisted programs, whereas in very large parts of the world we have decision making based on ego, greed, anger, religion and anything else non rational. People are dying because of it. For them Wilfred Owen writes.

Poetry

Magazine

July/August 2024

Anthem for Doomed Youth

BY WILFRED OWEN

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

??????—?Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

??????Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;?

??????Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

??????And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

??????Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

??????The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Copyright Credit: N/a

Source: The Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jon Stallworthy (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1986)

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