A Storm in an IoT Cup: The Emergence of Cyber-Physical Social Machines

The concept of ‘social machines’ is increasingly being used to characterise various socio-cognitive spaces on the Web. Social machines are human collectives using networked digital technology which initiate real-world processes and activities including human communication, interactions and knowledge creation. As such, they continuously emerge and fade on the Web. The relationship between humans and machines is made more complex by the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and devices. The scale, automation, continuous sensing, and actuation capabilities of these devices add an extra dimension to the relationship between humans and machines making it difficult to understand their evolution at either the systemic or the conceptual level. This article describes these new socio-technical systems, which we term Cyber-Physical Social Machines, through different exemplars, and considers the associated challenges of security and privacy.

Keywords: IoT, Cybersecurity, Human factors, Cyber Physical Social Machines

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Madaan, Aastha and Nurse, Jason and de Roure, David and O'Hara, Kieron and Hall, Wendy and Creese, Sadie, A Storm in an IoT Cup: The Emergence of Cyber-Physical Social Machines (September 16, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3250383 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3250383