The Internet of Things should go beyond the Machine-to-Machine paradigm and must include people in its foundation, resulting in a “Humanized Internet of Things (H-IoT)”. Starting from a relevant work of Fiske, this paper/slides define how the Human-centred Internet of Things can embed the Fiske patterns in this particular domain. An analysis of some of existing IoT platforms and projects is also presented with the aim to analyse how real implementations are in the same direction of such social patterns.

1. Humanizing the Internet of Things
Antonio Pintus
CRS4
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it

2. Who & Where
Antonio Pintus
@apintux
technologist @ LBS group, CRS4
research center based in Sardinia,
Italy, www.crs4.it
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
Experience in:
Internet/Web of Things
Scalable web architectures, distributed applications
EU FP7 funded project
Creating a socially aware
and citizen-centric IoT

3. Internet of Things, today
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
Proliferation of HW platforms
New middleware platforms to connect
things
Vertical applications
Mainly focused on protocols and M2M
communication and simple interactions
with humans

4. Internet of Things, what’s missing?
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
Briefly: including people in the IoT loop
User Experience
Privacy & Security
Going beyond controlling connected things

5. Humanizing the Internet of Things
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
IoT (M2M) + S-IoT + IoP = H-IoT
IoT S-IoTIoP
Is it possible to identify general patterns in an IoT involving
humans and things?
M2M Internet of People
social things &
people

6. Alan Fiske: models of social relations
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
Communal Sharing Authority Ranking Equality Matching Market Pricing
people use 4 common forms of relationships
- groups of socially
equivalent people
- same purpose
- material objects
as things they
have in common
- hierarchies
among people
- Authorities control
over subordinates
- no outranks
between people
- balance and no
authority
- collaboration over
shared goals
- one for one
correspondence
- proportionality in
social relationships
- calculations of
cost-benefits
- social value
defined by ratios
military ranks
family: food, use
car, …
people on a car
pool, colleagues
rents, interest
rates, taxes

7. Fiske’s models & H-IoT: thesis
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
Today, People interacts with (and through) connected things and devices
A Social, Humanized Internet of Things exposes all the Fiske’s models involving
people
Adds a new domain to Fiske’s classification: Things over the Internet/Web
People use Fiske’s patterns in social actions through connected things

8. Fiske’s models & H-IoT: mappings /CS
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
Totally trusted sharing of smart things
People in the same group use shared things
e.g., smart TV sharing, only family members can use a smart object whereas others also
by hosts
Communal Sharing
Things sharing
Things access
Groups of access
Sharing by location

9. Fiske’s models & H-IoT: mappings /AR
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
A person (with authority) shares things with people (down in the hierarchy),
authority is not transferred.
Authority can change sharing and usage policies.
People authority over things
Things sharing doesn’t cause sharing
authority over things
Things revoking, restrictions on use
Authority Ranking

10. Fiske’s models & H-IoT: mappings /EM
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
People share things for a common goal, equally contributing to it and equally
getting a benefit (no hierarchy)
e.g., two persons sharing different air quality sensors, allows a third to mashup and
build an application for environmental monitoring
Things shared with same authority
sharing
Use things to achieve a common goal
Equality Matching

11. Fiske’s models & H-IoT: mappings /MP
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
Typical IoT markets: HW selling, PaaS fees, app stores, …
e.g., a person pays a fee for a PaaS to connect its digital things. Relationships are
ruled by a contract
Things are sold, rented or payed
as a service
temporary sharing, contracts
Market Pricing

12. Fiske’s models & H-IoT: reasoning
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
IoP and Social IoT are strictly related and adopting a H-IoT:
people interconnect, interact, socialize, create,
communicate and make
through the Internet/Web of connected Things, implicitly
using the Fiske’s four forms of sociality

13. H-IoT & existing platforms
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
CS AR EM MP
IFTTT no no partially no
Paraimpu partially yes yes no
Xively partially yes not directly no
SocIoTal yes yes yes no
Glue.things partially partially no yes

14. Conclusions and Future Work
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it
- to overtake an IoT concept bound to M2M interactions,
people and sociality patterns must be considered
- a new domain in the Fiske’s classification of social
relationships patterns: a Humanized IoT (H-IoT)
- we will refine the explored concepts and a conceptual
framework will be presented toward building Fiske-
complete IoT systems

15. Thank you
Antonio Pintus
pintux@crs4.it
@apintux
WEBIST2015 - LisbonAntonio Pintus - CRS4 pintux@crs4.it