Data and Deception: The Internet of Things | Josh Bleasby | TEDxWolverhampton

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

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 4,396

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Technology, Data, Design, Digital, Internet, Life, Security

Id: w0bZrOG9WR0

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021