The Waving Cat

CategoryDigital Transformation

Which type of Smart City do we want to live in?

By Peter Bihr
In connected world, digital rights, Digital Transformation, policy
4 Min read
W

Connectivity changes the nature of things. It quite literally changes what a thing is.

By adding connectivity to, say, the proverbial internet fridge it stops being just an appliance that chills food. It becomes a device that senses; captures, processes and shares information; acts on this processed information. The thing-formerly-known-as-fridge becomes an extension of the network. It makes the boundaries of the apartment more permeable.

So connectivity changes the fridge. It adds features and capabilities. It adds vulnerabilities. At the same time, it also adds a whole new layer of politics to the fridge.

Power dynamics

Why do I keep rambling on about fridges? Because once we add connectivity — or rather: data-driven decision making of any kind — we need to consider power dynamics.

If you’ve seen me speak at any time throughout the last year, chances are you’ve encountered this slide that I use to illustrate this point:

The connected home and the smart city are two areas where the changing power dynamics of IoT (in the larger sense) and data-driven decision making manifest most clearly: The connected home, because it challenges our notions of privacy (in the last 150 years, in the global West). And the smart city, because there is no opting out of public space. Any sensor, any algorithm involved in governing public space impacts all citizens.

That’s what connects the fridge (or home) and the city: Both change fundamentally by adding a data layer. Both acquire a new kind of agenda.

3 potential cities of 2030

So as a thought experiment, let’s project three potential cities in the year 2030 — just over a decade from now. Which of these would you like to live in, which would you like to prevent?

In CITY A, a pedestrian crossing a red light is captured by facial recognition cameras and publicly shamed. Their CitizenRank is downgraded to IRRESPONSIBLE, their health insurance price goes up, they lose the permission to travel abroad.

In CITY B, wait times at the subway lines are enormous. Luckily, your Amazon Prime membership has expended to cover priority access to this formerly public infrastructure, and now includes dedicated quick access lines to the subway. With Amazon Prime, you are guaranteed Same Minute Access.

In CITY C, most government services are coordinated through a centralized government database that identifies all citizens by their fingerprints. This isn’t restricted to digital government services, but also covers credit card applications or buying a SIM card. However, the official fingerprint scanners often fail to scan manual laborers’ fingerprints correctly. The backup system (iris scans) don’t work on too well on those with eye conditions like cataract. Whenever these ID scans don’t work, the government service requests are denied.

Now, as you may have recognized, this is of course a trick question. (Apologies.) Two of these cities more or less exist today:

  • CITY A represents the Chinese smart city model based on surveillance and control, as piloted in Shenzhen or Beijing.
  • CITY C is based on India’s centralized government identification database, Aadhaar.
  • Only CITY B is truly, fully fictional (for now).

What model of Smart City to optimize for?

We need to decide what characteristics of a Smart City we’d like to optimize for. Do we want to optimize for efficiency, resource control, and data-driven management? Or do we want to optimize for participation & opportunity, digital citizens rights, equality and sustainability?

There are no right or wrong answers (even though I’d clearly prefer a focus on the second set of characteristics), but it’s a decision we should make deliberately. One leads to favoring monolithic centralized control structures, black box algorithms and top-down governance. The other leads to decentralized and participatory structures, openness and transparency, and more bottom-up governance built in.

Whichever we build, these are the kinds of dependencies we should keep in mind. I’d rather have an intense, participatory deliberation process that involves all stakeholders than just quickly throwing a bunch of Smart City tech into the urban fabric.

After all, this isn’t just about technology choices: It’s the question what kind of society we want to live in.

Read onRead later

Thanks and Happy Holidays: That was 2017

By Peter Bihr
In Digital Transformation, emerging technologies, IoT, personal, Research, travel
8 Min read
T

This is end-of-year post #10 (all prior ones here). That’s right, I’ve been writing this post every year for ten years in a row!

So what happened in 2017? Let’s have a look back: Part work, part personal. Enjoy.

Globally speaking I’d file 2017 under shitty year. So much so that I’ll try not to go into anything global or all too political here. But in terms of work it’s been quite interesting and impactful, and personally it’s been a pretty damn great year.

So, right to it!

The theme for 2017

Last year I wrote (and I’m paraphrasing to keep it short):

“(…) even in hindsight 2016 didn’t have one theme as such, but rather a few in parallel: 1) Growth & stabilization, in the business generally speaking, but also and specifically in all things related to ThingsCon. 2) Lots and lots of collaborations with close friends, which I’m grateful for. 3) Also, 2016 was a year for a bit of overload, I may have spread myself a little thin at times.”

Again, lots of collaboration with old and new friends. But this year I was a lot more focused, with lots of research that allowed me to go deep. I’d say in 2017, the theme was first and foremost impact. Impact through large partners, through policy work, through investments into research.

My work was with some large partners with big picture themes, like our work with Mozilla on trustmarks for the internet of things.

I hope to continue this high-impact work in one way or another.

Friends and family

Overall a bit of a mixed bag.

The bad: Some family members had health issues. Some friends received some nasty diagnoses.

The good: Some of the health issues were solved, we got to spend lots of time with close friends and family. Also, lots of babies were born among our friends, including one of our own. Welcome, little K! To be honest, this alone would make me love 2017. So yay, personal 2017!

Travel

For years I had been trying to cut down a little on travel to a somewhat more sustainable level. It kinda-sorta worked in 2017, at least a little bit. Still ways to go, but it’s a start.

Looking at my Tripit, this is what comes up. Tripit stats are a little fuzzy. (Did I mention I still miss Dopplr?) As far as I can reconstruct it on the quick, including vacation time I traveled to 7 countries on just 9 trips, and spent about 89 days traveling. (As opposed to 21 trips to 12 countries for a total of 152 days the year before.) So that’s great, even if it sounds like I might have missed a couple short trips.

pyrenees

Work

There was a lot going on in 2017, so I had to consult my monthnotes to refresh my memory. The focus is still, and ever more so, at the intersection of strategy, emerging technologies, and ethics/governance.

Lots of work around trustmarks and consumer trust generally speaking around the internet of things. Increasingly, artificial intelligence has also solidly established itself as part of the emerging tech canon I’ve been watching closely.

I wrote a lot. I mean, a lot. And I’ve enjoyed it tremendously. Outside my blog and some project-related newsletters and Twitter I did some long and short form writing:

If the writing is part of my overall communications landscape, then so is my website. So I relaunched that completely and restructured it for much more clarity.

I also got to work more with foundations, which is always fun. From workshops with Boell Foundation to research for Mozilla Foundation, the non-commercial, impact-driven sector is certainly an area I’d like to spend more time in.

Very Fun Side Projects

Then there are two “side projects” that have been especially fun this year: ThingsCon and Zephyr.

ThingsCon, our global community on a mission to foster the creation of a responsible & human-centric IoT, has been growing steadily. Milestones in 2017 include:

  • Another research trip to Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of hardware.
  • We had a bunch of ThingsCon-labeled publications, including about Shenzhen and IoT trustmarks: View Source: Shenzhen, The State of Responsible IoT, A Trustmark for IoT.
  • We launched the ThingsCon Fellowship Program to recognize achievements and commitment that advance the ThingsCon mission of fostering the creation of a responsible and human-centric IoT generally, and support for the ThingsCon community specifically. Shout-out to our most excellent six initial fellows, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Ame Elliott, Dries de Roeck, Iohanna Nicenboim, Michelle Thorne and Ricardo Brito. I hope we’ll get the fellowship program into full swing in 2018!
  • New cities with salons or conferences around the world. Let me use stats from November: At that point ThingsCon events have happened in 20 cities across 12 countries, from Berlin to Brussels to Amsterdam and Milan to London and Shanghai to Austin and Copenhagen and Nairobi.

I can’t possibly tell you how awesome this is for me to watch and experience. Learn more at thingscon.com.

Zephyr Berlin, the trousers/pants project M and I launched on Kickstarter just over a year ago, continues to be a lot of fun. Just a few weeks back we produced another small batch of men’s trousers, this time with super deep pockets to make things like cycling with large phones super easy. So there’s a new batch of men’s, and a very small number of women’s available. Check out zephyrberlin.com to learn more.

Conferences

A lot less conference work this year. What I did in terms of conferences was mostly for ThingsCon. I always enjoyed conferences (both the curation and the planning, but the curation much more than the planning), but not having a conference to plan isn’t too bad either, to be honest. A lot of my other work, especially the writing, would not have been possible if I had committed to another conference.

As a directly related note, without the fantastic, lovable, smart and endlessly committed ThingsCon Amsterdam crew and their annual ThingsCon event (it just happened for the fourth time!), ThingsCon also wouldn’t be what it is today. My eternal thanks go to Iskander, Marcel & Monique and their team.

Speaking

As part of my cutting down on conference travel, I gave just a few talks in 2017. Most of them focused on IoT and consumer trust.

There were a few at ThingsCon events like in Berlin and Shenzhen, others were at Underexposed, TU Dresden, Netzpolitik conference, DevOpsCon, and Transatlantic Digital Debates. There were also a few (paid) in-house talks.

Media

It was a pretty good year for media and writing. Among others, my thoughts or projects were mentioned/quoted/referenced/etc on CNN, SPIEGEL, and WIRED. I had some interviews—the lovely conversation for Markus Andrezak’s Stories Connected Dots stands out to me.

Things started and discontinued

Started:

  • Writing more, if you’ll forgive me going so meta.

Continued:

  • Zephyr Berlin, producing pants that travel extremely well.
  • ThingsCon as an event platform, and growing it beyond that into other areas of engagement.

Discontinued:

  • My Facebook account, just now as I’m writing this. Bye bye Facebook. You feel like Old Social Media by now, not worth having around.

Books read

Read an okay, but not great amount. I think it was pretty much these: WTF, Tim O’Reilly. Control Shift, David Meyer. The Rings of Saturn, W. G. Seibald. Wiener Straße, Sven Regener. Go: Die Mitte des Himmels, Michael H. Koulen. Babyjahre, Remo H. Largo. American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Death’s End, Deep Forest, The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu. Goldene Unternehmerregeln, Bihr & Jahrmarkt. Schadenfreude, Rebecca Schuhman. Rapt, Winifred Gallagher. Shoe Dog, Phil Knight. The Story of My Teeth, Valeria Luiselli. Snuff, Terry Pratchett . Deep Work, Cal Newport. Bonk, Mary Roach. The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene. The Industries of the the Future, Alec Ross.

Firsts & some things I learned along the way

Firsts: Wrote a ton of long form and launched it properly. Cut an umbilical cord. Diapered a newborn. Merged photo libraries.

Learned: How to communicate my work (focus, offering, structure) better (as the website will demonstrate). To make time for writing, thinking, processing input. Some Python. Some more about tech policy. These are all qualitative upgrades in my book.

So what’s next?

It looks like 2018 might bring a fantastic opportunity to continue some of my work from this year and before in a big-impact context; if this happens, I’ll be extremely happy. (If not, I’ll continue chipping away at the same issues with all the means available to me.) I hope to continue doing lots of research and writing. I’ll take some parental leave at some point, and otherwise spend as much time as I can with the baby. (They grow up so fast, as I’m learning even now, after not even a month.) Some travel, and hopefully once more a month or two spent working from a new place.

I’m always up for discussing interesting new projects. If you’re pondering one, get in touch!

But for now, I hope you get to relax and enjoy the holidays!

Read onRead later

Focus areas over time

By Peter Bihr
In AI, Digital Transformation, IoT, social media, work
2 Min read
F

The end of the year is a good time to look back and take stock, and one of the things I’ve been looking at especially is how the focus of my work has been shifting over the years.

I’ve been using the term emerging technologies to describe where my interests and expertise are, because it describes clearly that the concrete focus is (by definition!) constantly evolving. Frequently, the patterns become obvious only in hindsight. Here’s how I would describe the areas I focused on primarily over the last decade or so:

focus areas over time Focus areas over time (Image: The Waving Cat)

Now this isn’t a super accurate depiction, but it gives a solid idea. I expect the Internet of Things to remain a priority for the coming years, but it’s also obvious that algorithmic decision-making and its impact (labeled here as artificial intelligence) is gaining importance, and quickly. The lines are blurry to begin with.

It’s worth noting that these timelines aren’t absolutes, either: I’ve done work around the implications of social media later than that, and work on algorithms and data long before. These labels indicated priorities and focus more than anything.

So anyway, hope this is helpful to understand my work. As always, if you’d like to bounce ideas feel free to ping me.

Read onRead later

Interview with Netzpolitik.org: Regulierung und Datenschutz im Internet der Dinge

By Peter Bihr
In digital rights, Digital Transformation, IoT, media, media coverage, politics
1 Min read
I

In September I spoke at Netzpolitik’s annual conference, Das ist Netzpolitik. While I was there, Netzpolitik.org also recorded an interview with me: “Regulierung und Datenschutz im Internet der Dinge“.


A big thank you to Netzpolitik and Stefanie Talaska for the conversation!

Read onRead later

IoT, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation are all intimately related

By Peter Bihr
In AI, Digital Transformation, IoT, Research, Strategy
2 Min read
I

Here at The Waving Cat, we’re in the business of analyzing the impact of emerging technologies and finding ways to harness their opportunities. This is why our services include both research & foresight and strategy: First we need to develop a deep understanding, then we can apply it. Analyze first, act second.

Over the last few years, my work has mostly homed in on the Internet of Things (#IoT). This is no coincidence: IoT is where a lot of emerging technologies converge. Hence, IoT has been a massive driver of digital transformation.

IoT has been a massive driver of digital transformation.

However, increasingly the lines between IoT and other emerging technologies are becoming ever-more blurry. Concretely, data-driven and algorithmic decision-making is taking on a life on its own, both within the confines of IoT and outside of them. Under the labels of machine learning (#ML), artificial intelligence (#AI), or the (now strangely old school moniker) big data we’ve seen tremendous development over the last few years.

The physical world is already suffused with data, sensors, and connected devices/systems, and we’re only at the beginning of this development. Years ago I curated a track at NEXT Conference called the Data Layer, on the premise that the physical world will be covered in a data layer. Now, 5 years or so later, this reality has absolutely come to pass.

IoT with its connected devices, smart cities, connected homes, and connected mobility is part of that global infrastructure. No matter if the data crunching happens in the cloud or at the edge (i.e. close to where the data is captured/used), more and more has to happen implicitly and autonomously. Machine learning and AI play an essential role in this.

Increasingly, artificial intelligence is becoming a driver of digital transformation

Most organizations will need to develop an approach to harnessing artificial intelligence, and so increasingly artificial intelligence is becoming a driver of digital transformation.

As of today, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence & machine learning, and digital transformation are intimately connected. You can’t really get far in one without understanding the others.

These are exciting, interesting times, and they offer lots of opportunities. We’re here to help you figure out how to harness them.

Read onRead later
The Waving Cat