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Monthnotes for June & July 2018

By Peter Bihr
In work
4 Min read
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Lots of travel and a brief time off means a combined summer-ish edition of month notes for June & July. A lot has happened over the last 8 or so weeks, so let’s dive right in. In no particular order…

Trustable Technology mark

The ThingsCon trustmark for IoT has a name, finally! Meet the Trustable Technology mark, or #trustabletech for short. The URL (trustabletech.com) still forwards to the trustmark page on ThingsCon.com, but will have its own place soon. The most current version of the explainer presentation is up on Slideshare:

What’s more, I’m not alone in this endeavor—far from it! More and more folks from the ThingsCon network have been giving their input, which is priceless. Also, Pete Thomas (University of Dundee) has been taking the design lead and been a great sparring partner on strategy questions, and Jason Schultz (NYU Law) has been thinking about legal and policy implications. A big thank you to Pete & Jason! I’m super excited this is moving along at such a clip.

Going forward, the next steps are to finalize and then test more extensively the checklist for the assessment that’s open for comments in this gDoc. Jason and I also just presented the trustmark at the most recent ThingsCon Salon Berlin (video below), and I’ll be presenting it again at ThingsCon Salon Cologne on August 3rd. (Thingscon.com/events has all up-to-date details.)

Media, etc.

Brand Eins interviewed me about IoT and how it challenges our notion of ownership and trust. Details in my blog post here.

My somewhat eclectic newsletter Connection Problem has completed Season 3 with just over 30 installments. I’m taking a writing break of a few weeks, and then I’ll kick off Season 4 soon. Sign up now if you want to follow along!

ThingsCon

With ThingsCon, we co-signed not one but two declarations and open letters: The Toronto Declaration about AI and human rights (initiated by AccessNow) and the Open Letter to G20 Leaders.

Travel & Events I Attended

I got to join a whole bunch of things those last few weeks.

I thoroughly enjoyed both a workshop on IoT security and market surveillance by Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, where we discussed all things certification, incentives and assessment frameworks; and the always fascinating Museum of the Future workshop in Berlin. I’d been to one in Amsterdam before, and even though I’m spoiled by greatly curated events, the group that Noah & team convene in this context is humbling and fascinating and the only thing I wished is that I could have been there full time, which this time alas wasn’t possible.

In between the two I got to go to New York City for meetings and a quick swing-by at Data & Society, as well as Toronto for the Mozilla Foundation’s all-hands where I was kindly invited to participate as a fellow. Speaking of committed & warm & driven groups!

After that, some family time in the Pacific Northwest, and a short vacation, which included a little road trip through the Cascades. What a stunning & wonderful region!

What’s next?

On one hand I’m gearing up the planning for fall. If you’d like to work with me in the upcoming months, I have very limited availability but am always happy to have a chat.

On the other I’m pretty much heads-down to get the trustmark to the next level. This includes the nitty gritty work of both improving the trustmark assessment tool, and of lining up launch partners. It also means planning a little road show to expose this idea to more eyes and ears, including ThingsCon Salon Cologne, Mozfest, ThingsCon Amsterdam, and a few other events in between. We’re also in the middle of copy-editing the upcoming 2018 issue of the ThingsCon report “The State of Responsible IoT” (#RIoT). More on that soon.

So back to the text mines!

Have a great August.

Yours truly, P.

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Monthnotes for April 2018

By Peter Bihr
In IoT, media, media coverage, Trustmark, work
2 Min read
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Media & Trustmark

Some nice media action in April around the ThingsCon trustmark for IoT.

Offscreen Magazine kindly invited me to contribute a piece about IoT and how we can create IoT in a more responsible way. (Also, trustmark shout-out!)

The Wall Street Journal‘s cybersecurity newsletter (paywalled) did an indepth interview with me about the trustmark. Some more info about that interview over on thingscon.com.

Mozilla’s Internet Health Report featured our trustmark report from last fall.

And if you read German, I started a column over on Netzpiloten.de with a piece on risks and chances of IoT, and the role a trustmark has to play: Das IoT—Gefahren und Chancen im Internet of Things. (Full disclosure: I was project lead at Netzpiloten from 2007 to 2010, and Dearsouvenir GmbH is a joint venture between The Waving Cat GmbH and Netzpiloten AG.)

In an effort to make it easier to follow the trustmark project’s progress I also started a regular trustmark update over on ThingsCon.com (ThingsCon Trustmark Update 04/2018).

And last but not least, my co-fellows Julia Kloiber, Jon Rogers and I are also listed in the Mozilla Fellowship directory—Mozilla supports the development of the trustmark through my fellowship. (Full disclosure: My partner works for Mozilla.)

Miscellaneous ThingsCon

Also, ThingsCon is part of an EU grant proposal consortium which required a lot of paperwork. (That’s a good sign, right?)

We also had two ThingsCon Salons in Germany and some more action over in the Netherlands, both of which are easier to follow over on ThingsCon.com.

What’s next?

Between these things and lots and lots of research and conversations that will be shaping the development of the trustmark for the next few months, April was pretty packed.

I’ll be heading to Antwerp for a ThingsCon Salon and a workshop with Dries de Roeck tomorrow, and to first NYC then Toronto in June for conferences and meetings.

If you’d like to work with me in the upcoming months, I have very limited availability but happy to have a chat.

And on that note, I’m off for a last round of calls and off to the airport in the morning.

Have a great May!

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Zephyr Berlin: Featured in The Craftsman

By Peter Bihr
In media, media coverage, work
1 Min read
Z

The Craftsman header

The brilliant and kind Gianfranco Chicco writes a super lovely monthly newsletter called The Craftsman. For it, he meets and interviews craftsmen (and women, obviously) around the world about their projects, products, and passions.

I’m super happy, and very much humbled, that Gianfranco approached us to feature Zephyr Berlin in the March edition (read issue #006 on Medium).

Zephyr Berlin is very much a passion project of Michelle’s and mine, and we dug deep into the craft aspect when working with our designer Cecilia. Also, I loved that he gave a shout-out to our iterated designs that feature extra deep pockets, the model we internally nick-named The Deep-Pocketed One.

Here’s the blog post over on zephyrberlin.com.

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Welcome to the Post-Social Media Era

By Peter Bihr
In media, social media
2 Min read
W

The last decade was the era of Social Media: Community-driven platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn have completely changed the way we interact with, and perceive, the world.

(Purely anecdotally: I joined Twitter in 2006, about a year after it launched—and felt I was late to the game. Since then, I think I owe a great deal of my career to the people I met through Twitter.)

Societally, the impact of these platforms has been amazing: They have enabled communities to form, they allowed people with niche interests to find likeminded folks around the globe, and they have empowered groups to advocate and campaign for their causes globally without the need for traditional, large scale campaign infrastructure.

Social media also has made us all (with a caveat: some more than others) commentators, and active participants in the global media conversation. In the process, they allowed for real-time fact checking and commentary of media and politics. For a while, it seemed this was a bottom-up revolution that propelled society to more truth, easier access to facts and experts, and a more informed public.

Image (Public Domain): U.S. National Archives: Actual Demonstration by the Fire Department Training Station. Photographer: David Falconer.

And it has, to a degree. But at the same time, the same mechanics have also led to large scale harassment and fake news, and have helped undermine trust in journalism (aka “main stream media”) and political institutions like governments and political parties. Turns out tools aren’t neutral or a-political; and even if they were, Bad Guys are really savvy using tools for nefarious purposes.

By now, the combination and scale of fake news, harassment, and intransparent platforms with their black box algorithms are killing social media as we know it:

Social media first undermined the media’s and institutions’ credibility, and now their own. Facebook and Twitter (the platforms) are the tech world’s functional equivalent of main stream media; Facebook and Twitter (the companies) are the institutions.

In their place small, private groups thrive (think Whatsapp), but public social media has peaked.

We’re headed into a social media winter. The post-social era has begun.

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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
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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!

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