Peter D. Thomas

A holistic approach to visualizing business models for the internet of things

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises huge potential economic benefits. However, current IoT applications are in their infancy and the full potential of possible business opportunities is yet to be discovered. To help realize these economic benefits, workable business models are required that show where opportunities exist. In this article we describe the Business DNA Model - a representation of a business model in terms of Design, Needs, and Aspirations, which greatly simplifies presentation, analysis, and design of business models. This model can be used by IoT stakeholders to generate and analyse stories, models, and projects for strategic management, business strategy, and innovation. We present one scenario - smart logistics - to illustrate how the Business DNA Model might be applied.

Hegemony, passive revolution and the modern Prince:

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including a theory of consent, of political unity, of ‘anti-politics’, and of geopolitical competition. These interpretations are united in regarding hegemony as a general theory of political power and domination, and as deriving from a particular interpretation of the concept of passive revolution. Building upon the recent intense season of philological research on the Prison Notebooks, this article argues that the concept of hegemony is better understood as a ‘dialectical chain’ composed of four integrally related ‘moments’: hegemony as social and political leadership, as a political project, as a hegemonic apparatus, and as the social and political hegemony of the workers’ movement. This alternative typology of hegemony provides both a sophisticated analysis of the emergence of modern state power and a theory of political organization of the subaltern social groups. This project is encapsulated in Gramsci’s notion of the formation of a ‘modern Prince’, conceived as both political party and civilizational process, which represents an emancipatory alternative to the dominant forms of political modernity.

Advances on data, information, and knowledge in the internet of things

The internet of things (IoT) is a dynamic smart networked system with connected sensors, processors, and actuators that are designed to sense and interact with the physical world. Achieving the benefits of IoT requires the fusion and management of large scale heterogeneous data using knowledge-based decision systems and the integration of different technologies. Many challenges exist, including identifying things correctly and safely in IoT, modeling and integrating variety and volumes of data, acquiring knowledge automatically from the big data, and ensuring security and privacy, etc. This theme issue aims to explore these challenges through papers which address: (1) data models and big data and information processing in IoT; (2) how collaboration and interaction in IoT can be facilitated leveraging the best practices developed in social computing, social and community intelligence, and wireless sensor networks; and (3) the security and privacy issues in IoT and mobile computing. This issue is in collaboration with the international workshop on Identification, Information, and Knowledge in the Internet of Things (IIKI2013) held in October 2014, Beijing, China (http://ireg.bnu.edu.cn/IIKI2014/). Following a strict review process, we accept seventeen papers for this theme issue finally. Each of the papers was peer-reviewed by at least two experts in the field. In the following, we provide a brief introduction to each paper. Data dissemination is a challenging issue for mobile social activities in IoT. The paper titled ‘‘strengthen nodal cooperation for data dissemination in mobile social networks’’ by Guoliang Liu et al. proposes an incentive scheme to stimulate the users in a network to be more cooperative for data dissemination by considering selfishness factors of the users. Each node’s ability to fetch messages of a specific kind of interest is evaluated, and every single user can rent other nodes to help with obtaining the interested messages by paying credits. Extensive simulations on real traces are implemented to evaluate the proposed incentive scheme. The paper ‘‘self-Universum support vector machine’’ (SUSVM) by Dalian Liu et al. provides a theoretical explanation for an improved twin support vector machine based on the concept of Universum, which takes the positive class and negative class as Universum separately for the binary classification problem. Furthermore, SUSVM is improved by a special formulate of linear programming, which leads to the better generalization performance and less computational time. Data management and information organization play key roles in IoT realization. Yunchuan Sun et al. propose an extensible and active semantic information organization model for IoT in the paper titled ‘‘An extensible and active semantic model of information organizing for the Internet of Things.’’ The proposed model is well defined and involves two layers: the object layer and the event layer, which are both discussed in detail including the Y. Sun (&) R. Bie Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China e-mail: yunch@bnu.edu.cn

PUC theme issue: material interactions

With the advent of smart materials, ubiquitous computing, computational composites, interactive architectures, the Internet of Things, and tangible bits, HCI has increasingly recognized the role that non-computational materials play. As IT gets embedded in everyday objects, vehicles, and buildings, interaction design becomes not only a matter of designing interaction with digital objects but about how material arrangements work to create user experiences. What Robles and Wiberg [30] call ‘‘the material turn’’ in HCI has foregrounded both the materials from which we design interaction, and the design practice for giving form to material compositions under the notion of ‘‘craft.’’ As a direct consequence, ‘‘the material turn’’ is also a turn toward material interactions. In just about any design tradition, a deep knowledge about, and sensibility for, the materials being used is essential. By living in the world of the materials she uses, the designer sees potential and uses this knowledge in the act of design. Design then becomes a negotiation between form and function and between aesthetics and utility. In HCI, ‘‘the material turn’’ emerged from the concept of ‘‘tangible.’’ Ishii and Ullmer [18] talk about tangible interactions that bridge the digital and physical by creating graspable ‘‘bits’’ [12] that can be manipulated, accessed, and programmed [22]. Work on tangible interactions has helped inspire the re-examination of computation in more material terms (see [2, 5, 19, 24, 31, 35, 41, 43]). Computing is re-imagined as just another material, operating ‘‘on the same level as paper, cardboard, and other materials found in design shops’’ [2], and physical materials are now being re-imagined as substrates invested with computational properties (see e.g., [6, 26, 28, 29]). The result is the activation of existing properties of materials to create opportunities for interaction and experience. These two streams of re-imagination around computational and non-computational materials could be called ‘‘post-representational interaction design’’—or as we have chosen to call it here, material interactions. The notion of ‘‘Materiality’’ is now being applied in a number of different academic disciplines including physics [1], politics [4], philosophy [37], sociology [8, 9, 27], architecture [14, 39], and archeology [16]. It is of course not unusual that these disciplines use ‘‘materiality’’ to highlight the material dimensions of their object of study: It would, for instance, be hard to imagine archeology without materials being a central object of study. The interest in exploring computing through a material lens is also growing in computer science, media and communication studies, social technology studies, informatics, and HCI (see e.g., [7, 10, 15, 20, 21, 32, 33, 36, 40, 43]). These information systems-related areas have always focused on the immaterial dimensions of our world—on representations of things—and the differences between ‘‘real’’ and virtual, or ‘‘physical’’ and ‘‘digital.’’ It would seem that current developments in computing, such as cloud computing or ubiquitous computing, would take us even further away from the material. However, while Weiser [38] did envision a ‘‘disappearing’’ computer, he simultaneously envisioned computation as interwoven with the everyday world: ‘‘The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric M. Wiberg (&) Department of Informatics, Umea University, Umea, Sweden e-mail: mwiberg@informatik.umu.se

Theme issue on advances in the Internet of Things: identification, information, and knowledge

The Internet of Things (IoT) brings traditional Internet industry and society with new trends and promising technologies. Realizing the full potential of the IoT requires solving serious technical and business challenges, such as identification of things, organization, integration and management of big data, and the effective use of knowledgebased decision systems. These challenges, and more, are the focus for the International Conference on Identification, Information and Knowledge in the Internet of Things (IIKI), which provides a dedicated forum for international experts from the world to discuss their views on the current trends, challenges, and state-of-the-art solutions related to various issues in the IoT. This issue is in collaboration with the international event the international workshop on identification, information, and knowledge in the IoT (IIKI2014) held in Beijing, China (http://ireg.bnu.edu.cn/IIKI2014/) and addresses on hot topics relevant to data, information, and knowledge in the IoT. Following a review process, we accepted sixteen papers from IIKI2014 for this theme issue. Each of the papers was peer-reviewed by at least two experts in the field. In the following, we provide a brief introduction to each paper. The paper ‘‘Wearable Training System with Real-Time Biofeedback and Gesture User Interface’’ by Anton Umek, Sašo Tomažič, and Anton Kos presents a wearable training system designed to facilitate the learning process of proper movement patterns in sports training with a gesture user interface and real-time biofeedback. A flexible system architecture, including several different system versions, is proposed to deal with the diverse number of possible applications. An application for golf swing training is also developed to verify the proposed real-time biofeedback training system, and field test results show that the developed system can be used as an efficient tool. The paper ‘‘Secure Friend Discovery Based on Encounter History in Mobile Social Networks’’ by Hongjuan Li, Yingwen Chen, Xiuzhen Cheng, Keqiu Li, and Dechang Chen introduces a secure friend discovery mechanism based on encounter history in mobile social networks which can help people make friends with likeminded strangers nearby by exploring the fact that sharing encounters indicate common activities and interests. Unlike most existing works that either rely on a trusted centralized server or existing social relationships, the proposed algorithm is designed in an ad hoc model with no such limitation and the design is more suitable and more general for mobile social scenarios. Extensive theoretical analysis and experimental study are conducted, and the results indicate that proposed scheme is feasible and effective for privacypreserving friend discovery in mobile social networks. The paper ‘‘The Dissemination Distance of Mobile Opportunistic Networks’’ by Xia Wang, Shengling Wang, et al., investigates how far the data can reach within time & Yunchuan Sun yunch@bnu.edu.cn

In Marx's Laboratory

This volume provides a critical analysis of the Grundrisse as a crucial stage in the development of Marxs critique of political economy, with chapters by an international range of authors analysing key themes and concepts in this much-debated text.

3-Dimensional Visual Representations for Graphical User Interfaces: The Art of User Involvement

This paper reports on work to develop enhanced visual representations for graphical user interfaces in the form of three-dimensional icons designed as access points to information spaces. The aim is to enhance the interaction between user and interface object by adding ‘information depth’ and ‘information breadth’ to interface objects. The paper discusses the approach and describes some issues in the development of 3-dimensional representations.

Reverberations of The Prince: From ‘heroic fury’ to ‘living philology’

This article explores the ways in which Gramsci’s engagement with Machiavelli and The Prince in particular result in three significant developments in the Prison Notebooks. First, I analyse how the ‘heroic fury’ of Gramsci’s lifelong interest in Machiavelli’s thought develops, during the composition of his carceral writings, into a novel approach to the reading of The Prince, giving rise to the famous notion of the ‘modern Prince’. Second, I argue that the modern Prince should not be regarded merely as a distinctive (individual or collective) figure, but rather should be understood as a dramatic development that unfolds throughout ‘the discourse itself’ of the Prison Notebooks, particularly in the crucial phase of reorganisation in the ‘special notebooks’ composed from 1932 onwards. Third and finally, I suggest that the combination of the two preceding themes is decisive for understanding the modern Prince as a distinctive form of political organisation. Rather than equated with a generic conception of the ‘(communist) political party’, this notion was developed as a part of Gramsci’s larger argument regarding the necessity for anti-Fascist political forces in Italy in the early 1930s to grow into an antagonistic collective body guided by principles of ‘living philology’.

Refiguring the Subaltern

The subaltern has frequently been understood as a figure of exclusion ever since it was first highlighted by the early Subaltern Studies collective’s creative reading of Antonio Gramsci’s carceral writings. In this article, I argue that a contextualist and diachronic study of the development of the notion of subaltern classes throughout Gramsci’s full Prison Notebooks reveals new resources for “refiguring” the subaltern. I propose three alternative figures to comprehend specific dimensions of Gramsci’s theorizations: the “irrepressible subaltern,” the “hegemonic subaltern,” and the “citizen-subaltern.” Far from being exhausted by the eclipse of the conditions it was initially called upon to theorize in Subaltern Studies, such a refigured notion of the subaltern has the potential to cast light both on the contradictory development of political modernity and on contemporary political processes.

The Plural Temporalities of Hegemony

Louis Althusser’s critique of Gramsci’s “absolute historicism” involved the elaboration of a distinctive notion of plural historical temporalities or times. This argues, first, that Althusser’s theory of plural historical temporalities should be understood as integrally linked to his critique both of structuralism and of theories of the subject. Second, the essay argues that, Althusser’s early criticisms notwithstanding, Gramsci can be understood to have elaborated a consistently nonformalist notion of constitutive temporal plurality, particularly with his notion of “prevision” as a method of political work. Rather than culminating in a figure of temporal synchronization, hegemonic politics should instead be thought as a mode of intervention that valorizes rather than negates the “non-presence of the present,” or constitutive noncontemporaneity, as the fundamental condition of revolutionary politics.