Data and Deception The Internet of Things
i’m a 90s kid
and we were really the first generation
to grow up with ian and as we know it
today
things were a little different grant is
we used to have to make sure our phone
was off to be able to get online
rather than using our phone and we used
to ask jeeves for help
not google and then social media came
and it was a completely different ball
game
we could connect on a totally new level
but while we were decking out our bebop
pages
making friends with tom on myspace
watching videos on youtube and liking
photos on facebook
there’s a revolution happening in a
certain silicon valley
the people there were figuring out how
to turn other users into cold odd cash
for the longest time all of these
enormous customers enormous
companies with these huge customer bases
had no idea how to make money from their
products
but then the eureka moment they realized
we’d given them
what and where we like to eat our
political views our career aspirations
and all they had to do with that data
was collect it and store it
so they could model it and sell it and
create the most personalized
advertisement experience ever
it took years for the masses to realize
we were the product
and by the time we did social media that
had a major hand
in creating the world’s largest refugee
camp told millions of people they
weren’t good enough just so they could
buy their way to happiness
and all almost every democratic
collection
the subtlety and efficiency of how you
can be controlled by social media is
incredible
but we are here to talk about social
media we’re here to talk about the
internet things
so the internet of things terrible name
don’t look at me someone probably got
paid to come up with that
i’ll just use the acronym from now on
the iot
the iot one of the most common ones
is your smartphone it’s all the things
and devices that are interconnected by
the internet
you’ve got smart meters smart watches
smart speakers smart tvs you get the
picture this
industry loves being smart now
this is the second time i’ve written
this talk the first time i used all this
complicated terminology and i got super
techy
because that’s what i thought i needed
to do to explain the concepts
and every time i’d practice it people
would do this thing it’s kind of like
what you do when someone cooks a bad
meal and asks if you like it or
if someone shows you an ugly baby and
ask if you think it’s cute
kind of tilt your head and go yeah
so i’d practice my talk and ask people
if they like it and they’d go
yeah i just didn’t really understand it
and that’s when it hit me a lot of
people
really really don’t understand how this
affects them
and it’s in the interest of these huge
companies to make sure it stays that way
you see with all the recent events
regarding social media that have come to
light
people have become far more wary of
their online presence
so big tech needed alternative ways to
gain information
and they started using internet of
things
so it can be really dangerous and
normally when i tell people that
they say how can a thing be dangerous
well
things have been used to control us for
way longer than people realize
take bridges in new york city in the
early 1900s
if you were in the white predominantly
rich upper class
you could afford a private vehicle which
could drive underneath a bridge
but if you’re in the poor ethnic
minority you had to take the bus
and these bridges were specifically
designed so that buses couldn’t fit
underneath
effectively controlling who could enter
an area
that belief that self-perceived
knowledge that you
understand the purpose of an object that
what you perceive as its function
is its only purpose that is a truly
powerful deception
and it’s one we create in our own psyche
and we do it all the time
people perceive themselves as invaluable
to technology companies
to that i say there’s rfid chips in
trees in paris
and they make sure that the council
doesn’t waste water saves about
two to three litres of water a day
that’s about one pence
a modeled internet user here in europe
makes big tech about 30 pence a minute
about a dollar a minute in america do
you really
think you’re being ignored don’t allow
that naivety
to be used to control you in internet
technology
there’s a saying if you are paying for
the product
then you are the product and that
sentence is nice and catchy
and it used to work for social media but
it doesn’t really apply
when you go out and buy a 100 smart
speaker is that where the transaction’s
meant to end
because that’s really only the beginning
how many times have you said something
around a smart speaker
and then all of a sudden you get 100
adverts for it
how is that any different to social
media well you see
it used to be if you wanted to escape
the trap of the internet
you sold your phone three laps about the
window and actually went out and got
hobby or a social life
and that’s become much much harder
because the iot has superseded the realm
it was birthed from
no longer are the ai and the algorithms
that controllers online
purely a digital entity they’ve joined
us in the real world
and what this has meant is that these
devices can really transcend the
boundaries that we as consumers
initially set
and that’s never been more prevalent
than when the first reported cases
of data collection and their hacking
from iot baby monitors were reported
all of a sudden something very private
has been intruded on
it’s no surprise that so many of these
devices are suddenly finding themselves
in our possessions
as free gifts or a thank you to loyal
customers
because it allows access to so many new
areas for companies
how many of you right now watching and
listening or wearing a smartwatch
think about what that contains a gps
tracker a heart rate monitor a
microphone
one of the more advanced ways of
collecting data is to show you an advert
and see if it raises your heart rate
think of how precise
that information is how much value is
there
another example life insurance companies
will
give you a smart watch as part of a free
gift when you join
to make sure you stay healthy what they
can actually look at is if you’re
staying healthy enough for them to
ensure
that’s completely against your personal
interest but it’s data you are providing
when supermarket giants needed to be
more secure they turned to facial
recognition
but now facial recognition only shows
you the similarity between two things
a face on a camera and a face in the
database
for the longest time government
databases were used such as
passports and driving license photos
but they’re 2d images and for most
people they’re quite
old and outdated i’ve even got hair in
mind
so let’s think about it how many people
have a doorbell
with a camera all of a sudden your face
has now been scanned numerous times a
day
fed into some of the most powerful
artificial intelligence systems
on earth and being used to control you
it’s cross-referenced with all your data
and it’s effectively
giving up any chance you had of
anonymity
there are thousands of other examples of
where the iot is collected there by
unconventional means
far too many to read out here but know
this as the iot
fully emerges and becomes more
widespread it enters an arena
where governments across the world now
class the cyber realm and digital
entities
as the fifth theatre of war if our
governments are scared of what some of
the implications could be
why aren’t we but really the goal here
is
not to scare monger because the iot has
some brilliant applications that are
advancing our societies
you want to plan rapid response to
crisis situations like floods or fires
just look for where smart meters have
suddenly cut off
iot enabled vehicles can be made so
efficient and useful
that we never feel the need to own a car
and the iot is currently helping
revolutionize something close to my
heart
the fight against climate change no
the real goal here is to break the
deception we have in our minds
about the purpose of our devices because
as consumers we so blindly and
consistently enter into these
transactions
and as the consumer and the product we
need to ensure the iot agenda
meets our needs rather than us meeting
its needs
because we’ve only just started talking
about the disastrous consequences of
social media
but look how far things had to go to
start that conversation
let’s not make the same mistake with the
internet of things
thank you for listening
you