A world where people are important, a world where people have choices and the means to interact directly with each other.
The true value of Internet of People, lies in smart people. By leveraging the power of collective intelligence and unleashing the talents of citizens and entrepreneurs, the Internet of People can positively change the economy and society as we know it.
The winners in the digital world, are those who go beyond technological innovation and know that “their success depends on people”.
The Opportunity
Technology is at the point where people are poised to adopt new models of information sharing that are cheaper, decentralised and may be more equitable in the long run. These models will evolve in an era where a personal information, underpins the infrastructure. This infrastructure facilitates person-to-person interaction which provides a chance for the individual to regain control. We need to exploit the opportunities offered by our information futures without succumbing to the pitfalls that are triggered by our tendency to give up our personal freedom with our data. We have an opportunity to decentralises the Internet of Things ensuring it becomes the Internet of People.
The Internet of thingies
It is estimated that by the year 2020, 50 to 100 billion devices will be electronically connected in the globally emerging IoT. But at the center of the innovation that is unfolding across all geographic, industrial and technological borders is not so much those devices that are being linked together but the “connected person.”
The IoT is intended to extend data collection, smart networking, predictive analytics and deep optimization across interconnected people and most every manner of physical objects and information technology platforms around the world. Leveraging sensors, actuators, microcontrollers, mobile communications, big data and more technologies, the IoT would allow more and more useful information to be derived from more and more interconnected elements than ever before possible.
The internet of things is a vision of ubiquitous connectivity, where our households become well-oiled machines, as elegantly efficient as any Victorian manor house, but with zero staff and wages? The flip side is everyday household objects potentially become enemy spies, placing us under constant surveillance. If one steps back, and looks at the internet of thingies, one has to wonder, if one removes all of the people, what is the value to our society? The IoT only has value, if a device is linked to a person or human activity, which effectively underpins the "connected person".
When the history of IoT is written, its success or failure will be determined by answering a single question: How did IoT benefit humanity? In the end, nothing else matters.
"Things are not people."
The Solution Space
The Internet of People, infrastructure runs on top of the Internet and is as decentralized as the Internet itself. That means that no one will own this infrastructure and no one can control it.
The Internet of People is owned by the People individually and collectively.
The People-to-People economy
The person to person economy supports the production, distribution, trade, and consumption of goods and services by different people in a given geographical location when there is no company as intermediary between people who don’t know each other or if there is its influence is minimized. In other words this is the economy resulting in disintermediation, where most of the middlemen are removed. Within the People-to-People economy almost all value stays between the parties involved in each transaction.
The People-to-People economy coupled with the Internet-of-People has the advantage of permission-less innovation.
One instantiation of the People-to-People economy, is the Block Chain Marketplace, which operates under the world first Global Decentralised Governance framework. These are but commercial examples of an implementation of the Internet of People, many other solutions are expected within this space.
The Network
The Internet of People Network needs to provide several services to achieve its goal of allowing device to device People-to-People communication without third parties. Participants within the Internet of People need to find each other, agree on the context for some type of relationship and finally to connect or communicate.
The Internet of People is founded upon the Global Secure Identity, all secure interactions are between these Identities, they replace all device-endpoints which form the basis of all communication today..
Every Person on the planet can have an unlimited number of free, secure identities, and the Secure Identity Number (SIN) has this form 0102149d3fe5ee3455f180c5d19604f079853575633a96. Not that different to existing device endpoint addresses, but in this case identifying a person's Secure Identity.
One can consider the Secure Identity Number as the equivalent of the internet IP address, it allows one to attach as a Person (endpoint) within the Internet of People.
People are found on the Internet of People using the same decentralised infrastructure as devices use today, no chaneg or new infrastructure is required. This is a zero friction strategy, exploiting dual use technologies.
A new dawn, for People has arrived.
The Internet is insecure
The internet is insecure by design and its history. Connectivity was given precedence over security, it's this simple and underpins its global success.
The Internet of things is insecure
For similar reasons, the Internet of thingies is also insecure.
Given the number of deployed and non-updatable thingies connected to the internet, it is commercially impossible to secure 100% of the exiting IoTs' let alone the future ones.
The latest research:
- Around 19 percent of all tested mobile apps that are used to control IoT devices did not use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections
- None of the analyzed devices provided mutual authentication between the client and the server
- Some devices offered no enforcement and often no possibility of strong passwords
- Some IoT cloud interfaces did not support two-factor authentication (2FA)
- Many IoT services did not have lock-out or delaying measures to protect users’ accounts against brute-force attacks
- Some devices did not implement protections against account harvesting
- Most of the IoT services did not provide signed or encrypted firmware updates, if updates were provided at all..
Any code that is run on a smart device, be it the firmware or application, should be verified through a chain of trust.
Ok, so we cannot commercially secure the Internet of thingies..
The End Game
We have a clear vision for a decentralized human species, the Internet of People and the Person to Person Economy are innovations necessary to get there.
Stayed tuned, this is an evolving article, come on the journey with us, the technical details will be released over a period of time, consistent with the associated technology releases. The objective is to ensure an alignment between the vision and commercial reality.
References
- Securing the Digital World. Bit by Bit
- Internet of People (IoP) refers to digital connectivity of people through the Internet infrastructure forming a network of collective intelligence and stimulating interactive communication among people.
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