Affordances what you can do with technology, even if designers don’t anticipate that activity. Many engineers and computer scientists imagine the possible benefits of the internet of things, but a world full of device networks will also afford corporations and governments access to immense amounts of private data.
Big data information about many people collected over many kinds of devices, information that tends to reveal behavior but not attitudes or aspirations
Crowd sourcing allowing many people over many devices to provide individual pieces of information that in aggregated form have immense utility
Crypto clan an extended group of friends and family that we actively and purposefully maintain through norms of trust and reciprocity in encryption, content sharing, social networking, and information filtering
Cyberattack the process of finding and exploiting vulnerable device networks by entering them and copying, exporting, or changing the data within them
Cyberwar conflict involving the professional staff of established militaries who no longer just act in response to offline events but are trained to respond to the last cyberattack
Democracy a form of open society in which people in authority use the internet of things for public goods and human security in ways that have been widely reviewed and publicly approved. Democracy occurs when the rules and norms of mass surveillance have been developed openly, and state practices are acknowledged by the government.
Device tithe reserving 10 percent of processing power, sensor time, bandwidth, or other network-device feature for the user to voluntarily and openly assign to the civic organizations of his or her choice
Digital activism an organized public effort with clear grievances, targeted authority figures, and campaigns initiated using device networks
Digital club a small group of people with strong, direct ties who use their device networks for providing collective goods
Digital dilemma the difficult choice of internet policy: either encourage internet access and device networking for economic benefits and political risks, or avoid civic engagement over the internet and pass up economic benefits
Dirty network a social and technical system for corruption, crime, and human rights violations that supports negative social capital, passes negative memes, or allows for negative feedback
Ideology meaning in the service of power. Today, information technology is the most important tool for servicing power.
Institutions norms, rules, and patterns of behavior
Internet exchange point the physical infrastructure that serves as a mandatory point of passage for data flowing from one network, or service provider, to others
Internet of things networks of manufactured goods with embedded power supplies, small sensors, and an address on the internet. Most of these networked devices are everyday items that are sending and receiving data about their conditions and our behavior.
Metadata information about our use of device networks. It is data about data, revealing context clues about the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the production and consumption of digital content and devices.
Net neutrality the idea that all data, devices, and people on the internet should be treated equally
Organization a social unit made up of people and material resources, like desks and device networks
Pax technica a political, economic, and cultural arrangement of institutions and networked devices in which government and industry are tightly bound in mutual defense pacts, design collaborations, standards setting, and data mining
Sociotechnical system an organization defined by the relationships between people and devices
TOR Server a free and open-source software that allows your device to anonymously connect to a network so that activities and location cannot be discovered by someone surveilling the communication