Why I changed the name of the Council’s Internet of Things Group to Next Generation Internet

Before the name The Internet of Things (IoT) we had Ambient Intelligence, Pervasive Computing, Ubicomp and calm computing. IoT captured the move from the lab to the shop, from the demo to the pilot perfectly as the Cloud came up and the main drivers were supply chain and identification of goods through barcodes and RFID. It was quite logical that Kevin Aston came up with that name at that moment in time, 1999.

So when I set up IoT Council, theinternetofthings.eu in 2009 that perfectly captured the moment when the backend of the shop, the identified good and the ‘smart' applications thought up only from an engineering perspective were spilling over into the real home, the real car, and the real city, mainly being innovative in the wearable space introducing new personal tracking systems. For all other domains it was clear that enhancing capabilities of known products was going to be quite boring in each idiosyncratic operation but quite disruptive and groundbreaking because of its connected scope, size and impact. 

I will of course continue to use #IoT for Council and the iotday on April 9 (iotday.org). Internet of Things will be a good term for about 5 years to come, maybe even a bit longer.

We all underestimated the hidden bias in the virus like protocols of tcp-ip and html (pass on packet, pass on link) to favor the winner takes it all Over the Top Playing business model that managed to stay under our radar for quite some time as it started to link up and aggregate such small personal acts, offered ‘free’ services and defined, not only gathered, but defined the very notion of data - measurable bits of info valued because tied to a particular identity. Datalakes that do not support regions where citizens pay taxes for infrastructure and services, but only for users of devices and shareholders, are continuing to grow exponentially (services form aggregated new services form aggregated new services). The innocence of the network protocols, hey we create a global information highway ! - is fully gone as we begin to realize it is only a handful of players easing on the grid while the majority of potentially SME structured networks are grinding down in sand.

It is clear we need a new kind of thinking that is not about Digital Transition or innovation as these terms hide the pain of what is really happening. New systems are being forged, the term ’splinternet’ is heard in high places, and in countries where politicians actually understand what is happening (Singapore, China) strong integration is manufactured between AI, machine learning, bio informatics and traditional policy making and political debate.

Europe has decided to call this Next Generation Internet. It may not be ideal, but it is a very good start.

The focus in the coming years will be on privacies (moving away from the untenable notion of ‘singular privacy’ in a connected world) and novel ideas on trust, tokens and trade-offs, decentralized data management (see for example the DECODE project) and new interpretations, applications and services on search and discovery which is immediately tied to new ways of identity management, and device to device interactions (e-wallets in mundane products like coffee phones, washing machines and cars).

In the next years Council is part of one of the projects in this NGI space. We will organize Salons and co-creation workshops around these topics.

So follow @NGI4EU

In our vision NGI is a system of systems, a pragmatic cybernetics, that eventually runs a 500 million European zone as a service. Compared to China we have the advantage of building a productive balance between extreme centralization on infrastructure, spectrum, smart contracts and hardware by EU industry and extreme decentralization on data fully open for direct local democracy and services and apps by EU SMEs; and personal data clouds as envisioned by the GDPR. Compared to Singapore we have scale and the possibility to sell the system (running your territory-region as a service). Compared to the US we have relatively intact social systems and fully functional building blocks such as Estonian e-card, Horizon 2020, Digital Single Market focus. This scenario offers investors a real viable European project, strengthening public infrastructure and open business models on the data if they are on EU platforms, Cloud and app-store. 

Example questions for co-creation are:

● What are the processes with which we can facilitate a transition to pragmatic cybernetics as a real-time decision making system for a 500 million zone?

● What are the current mechanisms available to facilitate such a transition and what capabilities should be built in the short and mid-term to build a single European Cloud, a federated set of European IoT platforms and a dedicated set of protocols to hardcode Identity Management into a device (smartphone) that acts as a passport, controller of IoT devices, and payment infrastructure?

● What are the social and economic repercussions and instruments like basic income and how do these require border control of either territory or if the EU is run as a service, how do we define eligibility of such a service (for example, the Estonian ecard is a service that does not require Estonian citizenship)

We will soon have a calendar of events out, but for now we can present:

An NGI Move Salon, in cooperation with Digital Europe, DECODE, and TagItSmart. Our question for the afternoon is: where is the vital public agency on identity and/with/through blockchain?

November 22 Time 14:00 – 1700 Venue: DIGITALEUROPE, 14 Rue de la Science, 1040 Brussels, Belgium

Moderators: Gérald Santucci (writer) and Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, DG DIGITALEUROPE Rapporteur: Rob van Kranenburg (NGIMove, DECODE, Tagitsmart Ecosystem Manager)

FREE but RSVP kranenbu@xs4all.nl

See also the related event

TagItSmart.eu Informal Policy Meeting on Circular Economy and Product Passport

• How can we find common building blocks that integrate a vision on Digitization in and through DG Connect, DG Environment, DG Grow?

• Can the product passport be such a building block? What is the new model for a digital, dynamic, real-time labeling approach?

Singapore WF-IoT 2018 Call for Papers and Proposals. Theme: Smart Cities & Nations Organized by IEEE IoT Initiative.With IEEE Multi-society sponsorship. Policy and Regulation track.

The 4th IEEE World Forum on The Internet of Things (WF-IoT 2018) in Singapore seeks contributions on how to nurture, cultivate, and accelerate the deployment of IoT technologies and applications for the benefit of society.

Looking ONLY for bold contributions that address the urgency of the situation.

Track-leader Rob van Kranenburg rvk@theinternetofthings.eu

Au boulot!