New robot overlords: Welcome or unwelcome?
Join us on June 4th, 2015 at 6:15 when we'll be featuring T.Rob Wyatt, Internet of Things guru as he discusses how personal data is being affected by the influx of in-home robots like Jibo and Pepper. T. Rob will also be joined by Jack Mason of IBM for the discussion.
Here's how T.Rob describes this phenomenon:
Imagine a world in which with the most effective and detailed surveillance technology in human history has been deployed at Internet scale. Outdoors you are trackable by satellites, by drones stationed over population centers, by automated license plate scanners, by EZ-Pass readers nowhere near toll booths, by a blanket of CCTV cameras, and more. Inside of government, commercial and private buildings you are trackable by presence detection, facial recognition, Wi-Fi, BLE and more. However trackable you are physically, you are infinitely more trackable digitally.
Now imagine sophisticated surveillance platforms jam packed with face and voice recognition, presence detection, gait detection, night vision, temperature, light, color, sound, air quality, inertia, and infrared sensors, freedom of movement, gifted with artificial intelligence, capable by design of taking autonomous action, connected 24x7x365 and reporting back to the mother ship, and designed specifically to be deployed inside your house - the one remaining place in the world where you had an expectation of privacy. Oh, and by the way, would you mind giving it all of your account credentials and passwords, along with some credit card numbers?
Just add a cute anthropomorphic face, voice and affect, and this dystopian future panopticlypse becomes today's wildly popular business model.
The topic for this session is whether this is cause for alarm or celebration. We'll start with a presentation with T.Rob/Jack followed by a facilitated Q&A before breaking for networking, beer and pizza.
Info about T. Rob Wyatt :
T.Rob has been interested in the Internet of Things since the late 1980s, well before we called it that. His initial excitement at the recent emergence of an IoT market turned to profound disappointment when what was actually delivered turned out to be closed systems based on a surveillance business model that he describes as "the panopticlypse." He is now on a mission to promote a better IoT architecture that lives up to the visionary promise originally described by science fiction and speculative non-fiction writers decades ago. He hopes that you will either help build that ecosystem or join him on this quest by not settling for surveillance devices.
For more info on T.Rob, please check out:
IOPT Consulting
The Odd is Silent
Info about Jack Mason of IBM:
Jack Mason leads IBM Global Business Services communications team in innovation efforts around mobile, social, video and social business. Jack joined IBM 11 years ago, and storytelling has been a throughline in his journey as a Time Inc. journalist, screenwriter, digital producer and creative handyman. He is currently working on an internal video project to bring the stories of the IBM and Apple partnership, and the new apps that are its fruits, to life. He has also served as a curator of stories through Tumblr (Smarter Planet, The Social Business, The Smarter Cities Scan) and on mobile devices, through Flipboard (IBM: Insight Out.)
He plays keyboards in rocking eight-person Mrs. Milito's Awesome People and funksoul quartet McGroovr. And his Reverb online shop, Automatic Jack's Axe Shack, is stocked with great vintage gear for good people.
