The Human Intranet – Where Swarms and Humans Meet

There is no question about it – the Internet of Things (IoT) is happening as we speak. It is radically transforming the information technology platform, and providing an extremely high bandwidth channel between the cyber world (as represented by the Cloud) and the physical and biological world in which we live. The evolution is quite foundational as for the first time it allows for the engineering of systems that tightly interweave the "real" physical and the "imaginary" cyber worlds, often blurring the boundary between the two.

Yet, the IoT concept on itself conjures a picture of a static, internet-centric organization, in contrast to the dynamic and organic nature of many of the cyber-{physical,biological}
applications we envision. In such an environment, which we have dubbed the "Swarm", applications would form by opportunistically marshaling the resources that are available to them at a given time and place. The Berkeley Ubiquitous Swarm Lab is developing a broad range of technologies essential to make the Swarm vision come to reality.

Some of most compelling application domains of the Swarm relate to how humans interact with the world around it and the cyberworld beyond, as well as their fellow human beings and themselves. While the smartphone has already introduced a fundamental change, most of our interactions are still funneled through a limited set of means (such as displays, headphones, keyboards, touch panels) integrated in a single device. The Swarm has the potential to change all of this. Envision instead a "Human Intranet", that harvests the capabilities of all the devices we carry around us, on us, or inside us, to create a single open and integrated platform, opening the door for true innovation and creativity.

In this presentation, some of the true opportunities, challenges and limitations of the swarm and human intranet vision will be addressed.

Speaker: Jan Rabaey