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

TL;DR

This paper explores Cyber-Physical Social Machines, complex socio-technical systems combining social machines with IoT devices, highlighting their emergence, characteristics, and challenges like security and privacy.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of Cyber-Physical Social Machines, illustrating their features and discussing the challenges posed by IoT integration in social systems.

Findings

Cyber-Physical Social Machines are emerging socio-technical systems.

IoT integration adds complexity to human-machine interactions.

Security and privacy are significant challenges in these systems.

Abstract

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.