The Little Book of Philosophy for the Internet of Things

Lindley, Joseph Galen and Coulton, Paul and Akmal, Haider and Hay, Duncan and Van Kleek, Max and Cannizzaro, Sara and Binns, Reuben (2019) The Little Book of Philosophy for the Internet of Things. Lancaster University. ISBN 9781862203563

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Abstract

This Little Book is about philosophy. In our research on the PETRAS project, many of the researchers have drawn on different philosophical theories to help them to understand some of the difficult relationships between the digital, physical and connectivity qualities of the Internet of Things (IoT).1 In our research, we have had to consider these relationships in terms of how they impact privacy, ethics, trust, risk, security, and adoption. So, throughout this book, we present several different philosophical theories or strands of thought that help illuminate our research, these are; Thingyness, Hyperobjects, Heterotopias, Respect, Fairness, Ownability, Accelerationism. Because philosophy is so broad and many of its ideas have been around for thousands of years, it can be hard to know how it might apply to something as contemporary and technologically focused as the IoT, or to figure out how to get started with that challenge. With this difficulty in mind, the seven chapters in this book each describe how you can use different aspects of philosophy and theory to think about and understand the IoT. We have written this book in plain English - each of the chapters can be read on their own as a stand-alone, but if you read the whole book, then the links between some of the theories and examples will start to become more clearly visible.