COVER STORY
Insights
→ To make consent meaningful,
we need greater “apparency”
of how data is being used.
→ For the scale and speed of
the Io T, apparency/consent
decisions will need to be
automated on our behalf.
→ There is rich potential to
create human-centered,
nuanced services that can
leverage the negotiation of
consent/sharing terms.
100 images gets you a tax credit. But
you’re not sharing these with pet shops—
you don’t have a pet. And they don’t need
to know that. Right now, many feel like
personal data use is heading toward the
Minority Report dystopia. HCI and AI are
well placed to reimagine personal data
sharing as a more equitable, negotiable,
and sustainable practice than either
today’s take-it-or-leave-it, agree-or-not approach or tomorrow’s dystopian
disempowered bombardment. Research
and design in HCI will help create that
better future. Indeed, this article focuses
on how, with the Internet of Things (Io T)
about to explode, it is essential that
HCI, along with AI, embrace this space,
and design it from a human-centered,
human-valued perspective. We propose
several concepts and questions to help
envision the Io T as such a consentful,
human-centered space.
Remember the scene in Minority Report
where Tom Cruise’s character walks
through a mall and is met with a barrage of ads? Somehow the stores have
his data and can deliver customized ads
that today’s social media campaigns can
only dream of. We find the bombardment
hideous. This is the predicted future of
the smart home, city, and vehicle—or
rather, the dystopian view. There is an
alternative. Imagine walking through
these same areas without the ads because, like the entourage of a celebrity,
you have agents working on your behalf
to fend them off, while making sure your
mom—or other important or personally
interesting information—can still reach
you. After all, you’re not against sharing
some of your personal data. Your agents
know you’ll be happy to share your photos
of local dogs with an SPCA citizen-science
project about strays in town, where every
The Internet of
Things: Interaction
Challenges to
Meaningful Consent
at Scale
m.c. schraefel, University of Southampton
Richard Gomer, University of Southampton
Alper Alan, University of Southampton
Enrico Gerding, University of Southampton
Carsten Maple, University of Warwick
INTERACTIONS.ACM.ORG NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2017 INTERACTIONS 27
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