As the internet becomes more deeply entwined in people’s everyday lives, data flows around us in ever more complex ways – wearable technologies monitor our heartbeat, AI voice assistants cohabit our kitchens and our children’s bedrooms, smart cities know our every move, and facial recognition determines our access across country borders. The web of connected data collecting devices makes up the Internet of Things (IoT).
One of the most commonly used words to describe the IoT is 'creepy'. We will explore meanings of the word 'creepy' that question comfort, privacy and trust in the IoT across four scales - body, home, community and city.
In this session, participants will share creepy encounters with IoT products through personal stories, news clippings, photographs, illustrations and other creative ways.
We will use this github page https://github.com/namrataprimlani/creepyIoT/edit/main/README.md to build a crowdsourced repository of creepy IoT encounters.
I am thinking about IoT whistleblowers and watchdogs, communities that are watching and critiquing surveillance capitalism. Today, with the internet and social media, we all have a role to play in shaping and discussing the future of the IoT. We don’t have a strong vision for good IoT and there is a big gap between citizens and policymakers. I am currently working as a Marie Curie Research Fellow on the OpenDott project https://opendott.org/ - a joint venture between Northumbria University and Mozilla. The crowdsourced repository will help grow the conversation on healthy IoT and I hope to use the github repository CreepyIoT as a platform to start a discussion between citizens, advocates, policymakers, designers, IoT manufacturers about trust in the Internet of Things.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session?:The objective of this session is to build a crowdsourced repository. This session will invite participants to explore their own examples of creepyIoT in creative ways. It will be good to have lots of participants sharing and adding to the repository. Depending on number of participants, we can split into 4 groups (body, home, community and city ). Discussions will be open ended and will adapt based on time and the number of participants. If there are less participants ( less than 5) , each may be asked to share more than one example.
Namrata works at the intersection of Art, Design and Technology. She uses Design and Ethnography to investigate social, cultural and ethical relationships between human beings and technology. namratap.cargo.site/