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Sped. in Abbon. Post. - D.L. 353/2003 (conv. in L.27/02/2004 n°46) art.1 comma 1 - DCB Roma ANNO XXXIII | October/November 2015 Future Network Solutions Urban Life and Mobility SECURITY PRIVACY & TRUST Smart Cities FUTURE CLOUD Health & Wellbeing Augmented Reality FUTURE CLOUD LEVERAGING INNOVATION CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS Smart Energy Systems Future Network Solutions URBAN LIFE AND MOBILITY Technological Innovations OPPORTUNITIES TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS LEVERAGING Urban Life and Mobility DIGITAL SOCIETY TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS Urban Life and Mobility Future Network Solutions INNOVATION SMART SPACES Future Network Solutions TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS LEVERAGING Security Privacy & Trust Augmented Reality Urban Life and Mobility Digital Society TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS DIGITAL SOCIETY SECURITY PRIVACY & TRUST AUGMENTED REALITY Cyber-Physical Systems OPPORTUNITIES N.309 RIVISTA DI CULTURA DIGITALE FONDATA DA GIOVANNI GIOVANNINI to the Bit Era Farewell

ANNO XXXIII October/November 2015 N.308309 Farewell · ANNO XXXIII | October/November 2015 Future Network Solutions Urban Life and Mobility ... Giampiero Gramaglia, Bruno Lamborghini,

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ANNO XXXII I | October/November 2015

Future Network Solutions Urban Life and Mobility

Data Economy Security Privacy & truSt

Smart Cities Futu

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N.308N.309

RIVISTA DI CULTURA DIGITALE FONDATA DA GIOVANNI GIOVANNINI

to the Bit EraFarewell

Ride bene chipianifica beneSu Italia Uno prosegue l’appuntamento col buonumore targato “Colorado”. In questa edizione, il formatsfornatalenti comici più seguito può contaresu due conduttori di livello indiscusso:gli affiatatissimi Luca e Paolo.Se il tuo pubblico annovera gli amantidelle risate e del buonumore, questoè il programma giustoper pianificare.

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Tutti i mercoledì in prima serata

3N. 3 0 0 | G i u g n o 2 0 1 4 |

Marina Ceravolo Rai Pubblicità

Gian Paolo BalBoni telecom italia

GiorGia aBeltino GooGle

FaBrizio Carotti FieG

Giovanna MaGGioni uPa

FranCo Siddi PResidente otm

derriCk de kerCkhoveconsiGlieRe scientiFico otm

Maria Pia roSSiGnaud VicePResidente otm

luiGi ColoMBo Publitalia ’80

laura BononCini Facebook

luiGi roCChi Rai

roBerto Ferrarieni

Consiglio Direttivo

being monitored 24 hours a day may lead to anxiety, but it might also turn out to be very useful. We already have mirrors you can hang in your bathroom with an embedded camera and software that can scan your face for tell-tale signs of problems (digital imaging can spot your heart beat, problems in the carotid arteries and blood pressure). As the mirror gets used to your face, it learns about you and can spot differences or changes. the expansion and availability of data from various sources is an asset with amazing potential in a number of different contexts.

the so-called “reputation Capital” that concern individuals just as much as companies, marks the return of the culture of shame.

eit digital has flanked the refocusing from atoms to bits. eit digital’s blended life studies the interplay of atoms and bits, leading to augmented reality, a 150 billion euro business in 2020.

my data are mine to keep, or to sell, at my will. What this implies is that i have the same control over what i do digitally as i have over what i say.

thanks to big data, the buying and voting motivations of the common man are henceforth driven by a “digital unconscious”.

technologies can solve technical problems, but not cultural ones.

the data economy is coming, hand in hand with cultural change.

What are the fields in which new technologies can create jobs? Airbnb or uber are two examples of digital companies that are creating millions of jobs the world over.

the further advantage of the combination of atoms and bits is that it is both location and time free.

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MILLENIUM s.r.l. Direzione e Redazione: Via Piemonte, 117 | 00187 Roma | Tel. [+39] 06 48 19 145 www.mediaduemila.it

Uff. AmministrazioneSede legale: Piazza Sallustio, 15A | 00187 Roma | Tel. [+39] 06 48 19 145 C.F. e P.I. 06756090012 | R.E.A. n.1080507Stampa: Cromografica Roma s.r.l. | Tel. [+39] 06 43 20 81

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[email protected]

newsletter del giovedì: invia una mail a [email protected] per aderire

Direttrice responsabile: Maria Pia Rossignaud Direttore scientifico: Derrick de Kerckhove

Comitato di Direzione:

Furio Colombo, Paolo Coppola, Mario Frullone

Giampiero Gramaglia, Bruno Lamborghini, Gianni Letta

Paolo Lutteri, Flavia Marzano, Angelo Raffaele Meo

Noris Morano, Mario Morcellini, Francesco Passerini Glazel

Egidio Pentiraro, Andrea Piersanti, Cesare Protettì, Gianni Puoti

Mario Ricciardi, Pierluigi Ridolfi, Ruben Razzante, Guido Salerno

Franco Siddi, Roberto Saracco, Daniela Viglione, Alberto Vitale

Comitato Editoriale:

Maurice Benayoun, Philippe Cahen, Fabrizio Carotti

Marina Ceravolo, Matteo Ciastellardi, Giovanni Ciofalo

Gianni di Giovanni, Giorgio Fontana

Carlo Formenti, Nicoletta Iacobacci, Joi Ito

Marco Lanzarone, Sergio Maistrello, Roberto Masiero

Lella Mazzoli, Michele Mezza, Roberto Natale

Luigi Nicolais, Daniele Pitteri, Stefano Rodotà

Livia Serlupi Crescenzi, Imma Tubella, Vincenzo Maria Vita

TaBlE oF ConTEnTs

10 18 24anThony JamEson eXPo is the Mother of invention: explorMi 360 and the 3cixty Platform

laura mEiJErE CrisTanElli the data economy in Privacy, Security & trust

e it d ig itale it d ig ital

2115roBErTo saraCCothe data economy is coming, hand in hand with cultural change

roBErTo PiTTia rely on trusted information: cryptobrand

anTonio manzalinitowards a nervous System for the digital Society

26 31 32 37 4028DaniElE ViTali Where are the opportunities in the eid market?

EiT DigiTalLeveraging the opportunities of the data economy [1]

ElisaBETTa CarEgnaToeit digital @ eXPo 2015

13ChanTal garniEr urban Life and Mobility goes to Milan eXPo 2015

DErriCk DE kErCkhoVEapp opportunities in Service - guidance -Social innovation

sanDro BaTTisTiSmart retail: innovation for the retail sector

mariannE loor Leveraging the opportunities of the data economy [2]

La tipografia online per la stampa editoriale

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Richiedi una copia di prova. È gratis.

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sECuriTy, PriVaCy & TrusT anD ThE DaTa EConomy aT EXPo 2015

27 september 2015

DaTa EConomy in smarT CiTiEs aT EXPo 2015

14 september 2015

EiT DigiTal anD ThE DaTa EConomy aT EXPo 2015

7 october 2015

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sPECialE DaTa EConomy – EXPo 2015

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Europe is lagging behind other geographical regions in its capacity to foster and promote innovation. While having the human potential to be a world leader in

the field, Europe remains a follower in the innovation marketplace: it exports ideas, skills and pioneering individuals and imports innovative products.

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) was created to bridge this gap. EIT operates in five broad areas, grouped into Knowledge Innovation Communities (KICs), in the fields of Health, the Digital Economy, Climate Change, Energy and Raw Materials.

As one of the KICs, EIT Digital seeks to foster innovation and entrepreneurial talent in the digital technology sector, thereby helping to spur economic growth and improved quality of life in Europe. EIT Digital brings together entrepreneurs from a partnership of over 130 top European corporations, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), start-ups, universities and research institutes.

CEnTrEs

EIT Digital headquarters

are located in Brussels with

main co-location centres in

berlin, eindhoven, Helsinki, london, Paris, Stockholm, trento, budapest and madrid. Satellite centres are

found in milan, munich, rennes

and Sophie Antipolis, while a new

hub has recently opened

in San Francisco.

EiT DigiTal aT EXPo 2015 leveraging the opportunities of the Data Economy

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EIT Digital invests in strategic areas to accelerate the market uptake of research-based digital technologies and to bring entrepreneurial talent and leadership to Europe. Its innovation and education activities are organised in and around its co-location centres, where students, researchers, engineers, business developers and entrepreneurs come together to drive the digitalisation of society.

Since 2010, EIT Digital has mobilised talent, ideas, technologies, investments and businesses across Europe and beyond to stimulate disruptive digital innovation. EIT Digital invests human and financial resources for the development of high-potential talent and businesses that make use of information and communications technology (ICT) in Europe. Investments are clustered around 11 pan-European Innovation

innoVaTion aCTion linEs:

Future network solutions: Building europe's communication infrastructure of tomorrowFuture Cloud: trusted Cloud and Big Data for europeprivacy security & trust: A protected blended lifeHealth & Wellbeing: prevention through the quantified selfsmart energy systems: Defining europe's future energy marketurban Life & Mobility: From smart cities to smart citizensCyber-physical systems: european leadership in production and infrastructuressmart spaces: Blending the physical world and the virtual world.

sPECial issuE DaTa EConomy

EXPo 2015

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and Education Action Lines – portfolios of thematic activities targeting impactful outcomes. Action Lines are executed within our European ecosystem of top corporations, SMEs, universities, research institutes, start-ups and in our co-location centres.

Within each Action Line, EIT Digital selects the most promising research results, disruptive technologies and business strategies from its ecosystem and beyond, packaging them into Innovation Activities and start-ups. The objective is to promote the effectiveness of these initiatives on the world stage, allowing these innovations to become European success stories in the digital sphere.

Turning to its Education activities, EIT Digital adopts a blended approach where students develop cutting-edge ICT knowledge merged with innovation and entrepreneurship skills in a combined setting of physical and virtual classrooms. EIT Digital has three Education Action Lines:

EIT Digital Master School (Creating a new generation of European innovators and entrepreneurs)(http://www.masterschool.eitdigital.eu/)

EIT Digital Doctoral School (Delivering Europe’s ICT leaders of tomorrow) (http://www.doctoralschool.eitdigital.eu/)

EIT Digital Professional School (Keeping European ICT professionals at the forefront of today’s fast-paced digital world)(http://www.professionalschool.eitdigital.eu/)

European competitiveness and the wellbeing of its citizens’ require a broad and holistic approach to innovation. By training the entrepreneurs of the future and tapping into Europe’s potential to be at the forefront of the modern ICT sector, EIT Digital’s twin pillars of education and innovation aim to bring Europe closer to that goal.

iT inVEsTs human anD

FinanCial rEsourCEs For

ThE DEVEloPmEnT oF high-

PoTEnTial TalEnT anD

BusinEssEs ThaT makE

usE oF inFormaTion anD

CommuniCaTions TEChnology

(iCT) in EuroPE. inVEsTmEnTs

arE ClusTErED arounD 11

Pan-EuroPEan innoVaTion

anD EDuCaTion aCTion linEs

– PorTFolios oF ThEmaTiC

aCTiViTiEs TargETing

imPaCTFul ouTComEs.

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EIT Digital @ EXPO 2015 “Everything you wanted to know about Digitisation” - The Data Economy

EIT Digital @ EXPO 2015 with 3cixty: “Everything you wanted to know about Digitisation” - The Data EconomyThe 2015 EXPO in Milan provided an important opportunity to showcase and promote the activities of EIT Digital in the field of innovation. Accord-ingly, a cycle of on-site events was organised during the EXPO under the slogan: “Everything you wanted to know about Digitisation”, emphasising the theme of the Data Economy. The CEO of EIT Digital, Willem Jonker, noted how “digitisation is clearly rising in importance on the worldwide agenda, as digital technology is penetrating all facets of our life and society often with disruptive results, changing business models and affecting jobs. A resilient Europe will need to invest in the development of digital skills, stimulate digital entrepreneurship and drive digital innovation.”

Notwithstanding the fact that “digitisation” was not included as a core fo-cus of the 2015 EXPO in Milan, it was nevertheless present as a recurrent theme given its fundamental potential to act as an enabler for the broader goal of fostering sustainable development and economic growth. In this context, EIT Digital presented itself as one of the European actors that are promoting and enabling the transformation of business and society through digitisation.

“At EXPO 2015 we presented and demonstrated our activities and ar-gued strongly that the disruptive nature of digitisation requires action rec-ognising the essentials of the data-driven economy and its fundamental im-pact on business models, skills and jobs”, stated Prof. Jonker.

Indeed, in today’s digital and interconnected world, most data and information is accessible through a simple click. However, given the sheer amount and volume of this data, accessing and organising relevant and usable information remains a challenge. In Milan, we have hundreds of data streams providing enormous amounts of data every single day. Even as we browse through these data, more is being created in a never-ending cycle. The challenge confronting the individual user therefore is to organise and make sense of this data, devising ways of extract-ing the necessary and relevant information while not being distracted by the rest.

elisabetta Caregnato eit digital eXPo event Manager

in milan, wE haVE hunDrEDs

oF DaTa sTrEams ProViDing

Enormous amounTs oF DaTa

EVEry singlE Day. EVEn as wE

BrowsE Through ThEsE DaTa,

morE is BEing CrEaTED in a

nEVEr-EnDing CyClE.

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Some figures on the EXPO 2015 eventEXPO 2015 has just closed its gates. It is too early to evaluate the overall success of

the World Fair, but from the available data we know that over 20 million people visited the EXPO, 4,3 million of which during the month of September alone.

If we consider the active Italian population, 13-14 million of those visitors are Italian, meaning that one in four Italians’ visited the EXPO.

An estimated 200.000 people visited the fair every day, including 30.000 children.

Since it’s opening in May, 58 heads of state and government visited the EXPO and more than 300 institutional visits took place during the six-month exposition.

During this period of activity, telecommunications and data traffic in Milan increased by 160% while the use of credit cards rose by 30%.

The Milan EXPO lasted for 184 days from 1 May to 31 October 2015. Over that six-month period, Milan became a global focal point, where 145 participating Countries (94% of the world’s population) gathered to display and showcase the best of their technology while advancing concrete proposals to address a shared and fundamental challenge: that of guaranteeing healthy and sufficient food for everyone while respecting and safeguarding the planet and its ecosystem.

As a platform for the exchange of ideas and shared solutions on the theme of food, stimulating each country’s creativity and promoting innovation for a sustainable future, EXPO 2015 gave everyone the opportunity to taste the world’s best dishes, while discovering the best of the agri-food and gastronomic traditions of each exhibitor-country.

The World Fair is an event that happens every five years, with countries coming together to create expositions on a given theme. For the 2015 event the chosen theme and title of the Milan exposition was “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”.

Participating Countries had the opportunity to either build their own exhibition space, or to exhibit inside one of the nine Thematic Clusters.

With its 1.1 million square meters of exhibition space, the 2015 EXPO in Milan transformed the area into a mosaic of countries committed to raising awareness and providing solutions on a theme that is of critical importance for future generations and the planet as a whole.

The 2015 EXPO in Milan also harnessed some of the most innovative digital tools available. Advanced technological solutions assisted in promoting and spreading the event’s message. 360º screens, technological innovations, augmented reality, stunning clips... the EXPO also served as a platform to showcase recent advances in the field of digital images and new technologies.

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The Data Economy is coming, hand in hand with cultural changeWe moved from a culture of atoms to one of bits. Now we are moving towards an econ-

omy and culture of data. We live our lives under a constant avalanche of bits because over the past 50 years technology has made the transformation of atoms into bits easy, cheap and seamless. Significantly, most of the time we are not even aware of this bits overflow. Taking a picture of the Milan Cathedral, the Duomo, with a smartphone may serve as an example to illustrate this process of transformation from atoms to bits. Sensors, in this case the digital camera sensor, are the most common and accessible “utilities” that make this transformation possible. There are also ways to convert bits into atoms; when you print the digital photo of the Milan Cathedral on paper you are actually converting bits into atoms, although these are obviously different compared to the ones that originated the digital “copy” in the first place.

3D printers are another example of devices that transform bits into atoms. These have become more widespread in the last years as the technology has moved from very specialised areas (and from being quite expensive) to the consumer market (and consumer prices). Automotive companies have been using 3D printers for many years now and today they are used to manu-facture components that otherwise would be quite difficult, and sometimes impossible, to produce.

Hence, the “economy of atoms” is evolving and morphing into the “economy of bits”. Those sensors that played a key role in this evolution are now pushing this transformation even further, to the “economy of data”. The city of Wuxi in China, for example, has grown exponentially from a population of a few hundred thousand to over 6.5 million in just 8 years. This explosion was the result of a decision by the Chinese central government to relocate all of the country’s sci-entific, technological and industrial know-how and assets related to the world of sensors, or in other words to the world of the Internet of Things (IoT), to the city.

Each of us, in our smartphones and cars, has used sensors that were manufactured in Wuxi (a smartphone contains about 14 different kinds of sensors whereas cars have plenty more!).

In quantitative terms we are talking about billions of “things” that are already part of our gadgets (by the end of 2015 there will be close to 2 billion smartphones in circulation, which means that some 30 billion sensors will have contributed to the IoT in smartphones only). Overall, a trillion computationally enabled things will populate the world by 2020 although just a fraction of these will be directly connected to the internet (50 billion, according to esti-mates by Cisco and Ericsson). The sheer volume and diversity of data “created” by these sensors represents the roots of the “economy of data”.

To better understand this evolution, or shift, one has to take into account that the economy of bits, differently from the economy of atoms, enabled unlimited duplication. If I give you my atom, I no longer have it. On the other hand, I can duplicate a bit, give it to you and we can then both have the same bit.

In the past, I could duplicate music or a movie but it was not possible to repeat the process over and over again given that following each copy film or sound quality would be degraded,

roberto Saracco

node director, eit digital, italy

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up until the point when it would no longer be usable. Today, with digital music and digital movies, this process of duplication does not affect quality. Indeed there is no real way today to distinguish the original from its copies.

Music has become a commodity. We pay for the convenience of downloading a song, not for the song itself. I could have downloaded the same song for free (violating some copy-right…) but that might expose me to the risk of viruses and would anyway be a more time consuming process than simply buying the song in the first place. Youngsters may pretend that copying is a “right”, that one should not be asked to pay for “music” or bits in general, but in reality it is not the bits that cost, we pay for the service, its safeguards and accessibility and it is this reality that is transforming the music industry into a commodity. Different cultures are competing on the wave of a dramatic change: today we are still living in an economy of bits, but the data economy is fast approaching.

There are several examples that may serve to illustrate the extents of this paradigm shift. Take health care. In Italy the sector accounts for 7% of GDP, more than 100 billion euro per year, a figure that is constantly increasing since better health care helps people live longer, in turn increasing the need for services that care for the elderly, creating a virtuous or vicious circle depending on your point of view. The data economy could well increase health care efficiency without increasing its costs.

The black box of an airplane is used to discover errors and malfunctions when something goes wrong, but (most of) those same data are also used to increase fuel efficiency, decreasing the amount of fuel used by the aircraft. This is done via an algorithm that effectively trans-forms the airplane into a “glider” through a complex process of data collection and analysis.

We are moving in the same direction with regards to health care. Thanks to the sequenc-ing of the genome, at a cost that will decrease to 100 euro per sequencing in the next decade, the manufacturing of customised drugs will become possible, as will the ability to anticipate problems and fix them at a much lower cost than curing diseases or sicknesses once they occur.

Genome sequencing can be compared to today’s blood tests in terms of cost and time, with the important difference that it only needs to be done once. All new born babies in the next decade will have their genome tagged (in the web) and a customised health care protocol will be in place, significantly decreasing the health care costs associated with individual patients.

Information about “us” is ever more available. The Apple watch on your wrist can gener-ate raw data that once correlated give rise to information about you, including your health. Clearly, a smart watch is not as accurate as a hospital examination, but given that it is always on your wrist its limited accuracy can be compensated somewhat through continuous monitor-ing, resulting in a much better digital picture of your health. Welcome to proactive medicine!

Being monitored 24 hours a day may lead to anxiety, but it might also turn out to be very useful. We already have a mirror (produced by Philips) you can hang in your bathroom with an embedded camera and software that can scan your face for tell-tale signs of problems (digi-tal imaging can measure your heart beat, problems in the carotid arteries and blood pressure). As the mirror gets used to your face, it learns about you and can spot differences or changes.

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The expansion and availability of data from various sources is an asset with amazing potential in a number of different contexts.

Songdu, in South Korea, is the first smart city where daily health care data from citizens can be remotely analysed and compared through correlation with that of other people nearby, thus helping to detect patterns that can be location related. Like the black box of an airplane, data will change and improve the idea of health care as we know it.

An experimental program in the US State of Minnesota accumulates patients’ data for cross-reference to derive information on the effects of drugs and cure protocols. It is like having a continuous on-going medical trial. By cross referencing patients data, researchers at Stanford University detected harmful side effects from two specific drugs prescribed by different doctors for completely different reasons.

The economy of data will impact roles, there-fore, effectively changing the way we live our lives (of course you can feel as if you are always in a hos-pital or like you are never in one, but this will be subjective and also cultural).

In the coming ten years smart cities will see a growing number of self-driving cars (starting with assisted driving cars). That will be a game changer for the industry and for our life style and culture (and the two will go hand-in-hand as one is impossible without the other). In my car, still behind the steering wheel, I will no longer have “to pay attention”, just be seated and wait to reach my destination.

It is today 15 years since the European Commis-sion first launched a research program that aimed to slash the number of road accident casualties. Bil-lions of euro have been invested and yet we already have technologies that can cut casualties down to zero (or close to it). We could remove speed limits, do away with traffic lights and install antennas that let cars talk with one another and with the road system. We all understand the need for “others” to respect the speed limit…. it does not apply to us, however, since we are such good, sporty, drivers!

Technologies can solve technical problems, but not cultural ones. Think about the traffic topology of a city. Each city has its own one-way streets. In a smart

city with self-driving cars there is no need for one-way streets. The topology is determined in real-time based on the needs of the moment. Data is changing the shape of our cities and the way we use them. By evolving from the world of bits to the world of data we can change the world of atoms. This is one of the big revolutions knocking at our door.

EIT Digital has flanked the refocusing from atoms to bits. EIT Digital’s blended life studies the interplay of atoms and bits, leading to augmented reality, a 150 billion euro business in 2020. Applications like Word Lens (now acquired by Google) let you look at a Japanese menu in a restaurant seeing the menu in your own language, still leaving the food images that ac-company the dishes. Only the characters change, adapting to your needs, the rest remains the same in a continuous interaction between atoms and bits.

The data economy is the coming challenge: it will leverage on bits to create semantics that in turn will change the bits and the way we interact with atoms, including the ones making up our own bodies.

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Urban Life and Mobility is one of the eight Action Lines covered by EIT Digital. The Action Line deals with smart cities, but there will be no smart cities if there are no

smart citizens.The emergence of new behaviours – the way we move, work, entertain and so-

cialise – will be at the heart of new and upcoming business models. It is not just a matter of technology; it is primarily a matter of people. With the use of smart-phones and mobile applications, ubiquity is now a reality and instantaneity is a strong daily expectation.

We are increasingly becoming both service consumers and service producers. With social networking, crowdsourcing and live information we have the opportunity to turn from passive and consumer-minded individuals to active, collaborative and sharing-ori-ented citizens.

At the 2015 EXPO in Milan, under the title of “The Data Economy in Urban Life and Mobility”, EIT Digital presented some of its innovations in the field of smart cities. Hosted by Telecom Italia Mobile, partner of EIT Digital, the event attracted more than 100 professionals.

The EXPO became a small crowded city, an ideal living lab for Urban Life and Mobil-ity innovations. Two of them, ExplorMI 360 and CityOmeters, were used there. What are they?

Let’s look at 3cixty3cixty (https://www.3cixty.com/) is a platform for building applications that help

visitors compare and combine information about events, places and transport in a city like never before. “The name is a play on the words 360° and city” said Anthony Jame-son, the project leader. These applications are built on a knowledge base that integrates official data sources, social media and other web content. ExplorMI 360, the first major 3cixty application, was developed to get the most out of the EXPO and the city of Milan.

Let’s look at CityOmetersThe other innovation used at the EXPO is CityOmeters (http://www.cityome-

ters.com/), a product of Fluxedo. It gives municipalities and city-scale event managers

Urban Life and Mobility goes to Milan EXPO 2015

Chantal garnier

corporate communications,

eit digital, france

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an accurate visualisation and measurement of the city pulse from different real time data streams, such as social media, mobile telephone usage statistics, app usage statis-tics, IoT sensors etc.

Thanks to a joint-cooperation with the Polytechnic University of Milan (a partner of EIT Digital), at the EXPO Gate the social media activity of visitors is projected on a map of the EXPO area. On the Web, a live infographic shows real-time Twitter and Ins-tagram activity at EXPO and throughout Milan.

3cixty and CityOmeters were not the only innovations presented during the ULM dedi-cated event at EXPO 2015.

EIT Digital also presented ProtoWorld (http://www.gapslabs.org/protoworld/), an interactive simulation tool that allows mobility stakeholders to collaborate in envisioning new mobility strategies while experimenting with dif-ferent scenarios in a realistic 3D environment.

This could help event organisers reduce wait-ing time at the gates by simulating the flows of visitors, depending on the means of transport and time of the day, both before and during an event.

FlashPoll (http://www.flashpoll.eu/) was the fourth innovation presented by EIT Digital at the EXPO. It is a mobile application that public institutions, administrations and governments can use to interact with their citizens through short polls on their mo-bile phones. Polls are submitted to users depending on their location and in an anony-mous way.

Big event organisers can receive live feedback from visitors about transport, gates, ac-cess information, food etc., helping to increase guest satisfaction during events.

All of these innovations have been made possible thanks to a collaboration between EIT Digital’s education, research and industry partners. These include, Thales, DFKI, Eurecom, Telecom Italia, KTH, the Polytechnic University of Milan, TU Delft and Sie-mens grouped and supported by EIT Digital in the Urban Life and Mobility Action Line.

EIT Digital also presented its coached start-up PlugSurfing (https://www.plugsurfing.com/), an application and billing system that empowers electric car drivers to locate and use charging points wherever they are, with a single billing interface.

Prof. Derrick de Kerckhove wrapped up the event by highlighting fundamental trends underlying these innovations that should be kept in mind for the future.

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app: utilities for miracles“is your neighbourhood deserving of some attention lately?

is the traffic keeping you up at night, or has trash been accumulating on street corners for too long?

Let us imagine a miracle: the municipality takes up your complaints and improvements are promised. today, apps can facilitate this kind of miracle. Flashpoll allows you to call on residents in your neighbourhood to vote on a given proposal. A mini-referendum of sorts. Hyper-localised and without wasting money, this app brings us one step closer to the ideal of “smart Democracy”!

i call this new precision with which search engines allow us to do research, hyper-rele-vance. Big Data allows us to satisfy new needs. plugsurfing, for example, permits electronic car drivers to not only find the closest charging point for their vehicle but also the best price.

today the main problem facing electric car users is the lack of interoperability among the 70 european operators active in the sector. increasing user confidence is key, as until recently these drivers worried about not finding the correct charging socket and therefore of running out of elec-tricity. the business plan is simple: charge a few cents from all recharging transactions…

Fluxedo is part of a new generation of apps that employ Big Data and can reveal the emotional state (mood analytics) of society, of a city or even the market. it is called “City sensing” and it analyses the frequency of key words on twitter, Facebook, instagram and

Youtube to recognise collective demographic trends. Of a greater specific relevance for urban planners, protoWorld applies the “gaming” principles of

simCity, a famous urban construction platform in the world of online gaming, to simulate traffic pat-terns and broader trends tied to neighbourhood development and construction.

Let us unite protoWorld and Flashpoll and see how we can improve our cities together. these trends and more emerged from the morning presentations dedicated to the unveiling of eit

Digital’s urban apps. A stimulating discussion, not only thanks to the utility of the apps, but also as a means of inspiring the public’s imagination on developing new solutions for every day problems”.

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EXPO is the Mother of Invention: ExplorMI 360 and the 3cixty Platform

3cixty is a multinational innovation activity that was initiated and supported by EIT Digital. It was conceived in mid-2013 with the goal of taking ad-

vantage of the large flow of visitors during EXPO 2015 to create and test inno-vative ways of exploring a major event as well as the broader city hosting it. The name “3cixty” refers to the idea of a “360-degree view” of a city: an especially comprehensive view.

The most visible result of this effort is the application ExplorMI 360, which was officially endorsed by the organisers of EXPO 2015 and whose website (www.3cixty.com) and mobile app have attracted tens of thousands of visitors.

What is ExplorMI 360, and what Is Special About it?The first novel characteristic of ExplorMi 360 is that it is a multi-device ap-plication that offers different, complementary functions on various devices. ExplorMI 360 comprises:A website that is best suited for tablets or notebooks. A smartphone app designed for smaller mobile devices.

Most other multi-device applications essentially present the same function-ality and information on different devices. In contrast, ExplorMi 360 takes advantage of the strengths of each device to offer two separate, yet complemen-tary, kinds of functionality.

Let us consider the website first.At home, in your hotel, or while relaxing in a café in Milan you can plan

your itinerary in the city and the EXPO in advance. The parallel exploration interface of the website enables users to explore and compare information about the EXPO and Milan in unison. For example, if you are an art lover who will be

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visiting Milan with your family, you can search for hotels that are within walking distance of day care centres and then check which of these have the most interest-ing art exhibitions nearby. When planning your visit to the EXPO you can look for exhibits that will be interesting for parents as well as children, and you can select a combination of places and events that are located in close vicinity to one another, thereby avoiding long walks across the EXPO site.

As you plan and explore, the application allows you create a “Wish List” where you can save individual places and events for future reference.

When you are ready to begin exploring the city or the EXPO site, the smart-phone app comes into play. You may not want to carry your tablet around with you all day (let alone your notebook), but you can surely use the ExplorMI 360 smartphone app (available for Android and iOS). This app shows you what is on your Wish List, reminds you when you are near one of these places or events and gives you directions on how to get there. It also enables you to do additional explorations while moving around, showing you places and events that are near your current location or near items on your Wish List.

A second innovative aspect of ExplorMi 360, which is necessary for the realisation of the functionality described so far, is its extensive integrated city knowledge base. Using semantic technology, the 3cixty team collected data about events, places and means of transport from twenty sources, including a number of local data sources provided by the digital ecosystem E015, which is supported by the EXPO organisers. The places in the knowledge base, more than 200.000 in number, range from the Italian Pavilion to on-site ATM ma-chines, from the Teatro alla Scala to metro stations in Milan. The events in the knowledge base, numbering about 30.000, range from reoccurring EXPO events to big festivals in the city. This type of data is more tightly integrated and organised compared to other urban applications that offer multiple types of data. For example, if you would like to eat a good meal Saturday evening after attending a concert, you can look for highly rated restaurants that are within a short metro ride from the concert hall, thereby making use of infor-mation about events, locations and means of transport all at once.

Two further innovations were found to be necessary to make ExplorMI 360 work within the especially demanding environment of EXPO 2015:

1. ExplorMI 360 includes built-in support in English and Italian; but given that visitors come from all around the world, universal accessibility to ExplorMI 360 could only be achieved by providing integrated automatic translation in a much larger number of languages. This was accomplished by the ExplorMI 360 website with the help of Google Translate. For this purpose it was necessary to invent a novel way of using text in the web user interface, with relatively long natural language formulations that are sufficiently unambiguous to be automati-cally translated in a comprehensible way (for example “All events in the Musical Concert category that take place within the date range 19-22 October”).

2. We found that many busy visitors do not want to take the time to plan ahead and explore using the powerful novel functions of the web application, especially since these new functions are currently available only in one city. For these users, we invented “quick start apps”. A quick start app covers a specific topic that will be of interest to some users, such as “EXPO Services”. It enables users of the website to take advantage of the powerful exploration functionality simply by clicking on questions formulated in plain English (or automatically translated into other languages), such as “What are the main food services on the EXPO site?”. A potentially revolutionary feature is that any reasonably ex-

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perienced user of ExplorMi 360 can create his or her own quick start app via a point-and-click user interface. For example, the organiser of an event can quickly create a quick start app that provides answers to the questions that visitors to the event are likely to want to know about. It is a bit like creating an interactive map for the area around the event, but many additional forms of exploration can be supported by a quick start app. People have been responding enthusiastically to this opportunity, as just about anyone can now create a powerful urban app in less than an hour. We expect that people will think of many new applications for quick start apps, some of which will no doubt be of commercial interest.

ExplorMi 360 offers many more features, too numerous to describe here, such as the ability to benefit from ratings given by your social network friends; to collaborate remotely with other people while exploring the website; and to see a record of your movements throughout Milan and the EXPO, either on a map or in a list of trips that you have made. The cutting-edge character of ExplorMi 360 was formally acknowledged in mid-October 2015 when the 3cixty Milan knowledge base and application won the first prize in the 2015 Semantic Web Challenge, a prestigious competition that attracted strong con-tributions from around the world as well as a considerable interest from the tech industry. Entries to the challenge were expected to demonstrate at least one of the following three properties: (a) clear commercial potential, (b) a large existing user base and (c) useful functionality that also has social value. Readers of this article who are curious to experience ExplorMi 360 more concretely are encouraged to visit the website, www.3cixty.com.

What is the 3cixty Platform and what are its Business Prospects?

The technology used to create ExplorMi 360 is called the 3cixty platform. It is a set of tools and services that can be used to create applications that have some or all of the features exemplified by ExplorMi 360, possibly along with other fea-tures. Knowledge bases for other cities and regions are now being created using the tools provided by the 3cixty platform. Application developers can use various application programming interfaces (APIs) to create their mobile or web-based applications. If they want to save time, they can use tools for rapid application development that are now being added to the 3cixty platform.

Other cities and regions have demonstrated a good deal of interest for the creation of applications using the 3cixty platform. Several such applications are planned for 2016, after the founding of a company that will commercialise 3cixty technology. Moreover, applications can also be created that use only one or more parts of the 3cixty platform. For example, discussions are currently being conducted with several companies that are interested in other ways of exploiting urban knowledge bases or of enabling people to explore rich content in novel ways, even if it has nothing to do with cities.

In sum, a variety of avenues exist for the commercialisation of 3cixty tech-nology. It should be clear that the creation and testing of these diverse in-novations would have been difficult for a typical start-up. These were made possible by EIT Digital unique organisation which encouraged and supported the business-oriented collaboration of a dozen partner institutions (listed on www.3cixty.com), ranging from companies to universities, along with five start-up companies that contributed essential technology and services.

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The Data Economy in Privacy, Security & Trust

Privacy is a necessity that cuts across different fields and is intertwined with every aspect of our lives. EIT Digital, with its Privacy, Security

& Trust (PST) Action Line, looks at innovative solutions to these various needs.

EIT Digital presented some of these solutions at EXPO 2015 on Sep-tember 27th.

The goal of the event was to engage with visitors and allow them to fa-miliarise with the activities carried out by EIT Digital in the area of Privacy, Security & Trust (PST). Moreover, the event sought to promote the Data Economy, which is of ever-increasing importance in the era of digitalisation and the pervasive usage of computing machines and smart devices in cyber-space, for businesses, public administrations and customers alike.

EIT Digital aimed at raising awareness on the importance of timely data protection measures in order to allow for a smooth growth of the Data Economy and for it to become widely accepted, enabling unprece-dented user experiences in a free and safe cyberspace.

During his presentation, PST Action Line leader Jovan Gol-ic, raised thirty points listed here: https://www.eitdigital.eu/fileadmin/files/EIT_ICT_Labs_Italy/PST_presentations/Golic_EXPO_2015.pdf that should be taken into account when designing and putting into practice secure, privacy-aware and trustworthy digital systems.

laura meijere Cristanelli corporate communications,

eit digital, italy

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EIT Digital presented some of its innovation activities that seek to re-spond to the growing demand for privacy:Ideal privacy via homomorphic encryption (CEA LIST);Digital identity management (Poste Italiane);Mobile privacy and security (F-Secure);Mobile anti-malware protection (Reply);Behavioural biometric authentication (University of Trento);High-security smartphones (Technical University of Berlin).

In addition to these activities, EIT Digital also helps start-up com-panies that are promoting innovation in the areas of Privacy, Security & Trust, like Cryptobrand, a start-up that harnesses technology to pro-mote new opportunities aimed at improving the digital certification of food products.

SecurityMatters, another start-up of the PST ecosystem, presented cyber security solutions in water supply and food production systems.

Chino.io, winner of the PST Idea Challenge in 2014, described how its cloud services enable the development of privacy-aware mobile health apps as well as other apps dealing with sensitive data.

Stefano Quintarelli, a member of the Italian Parliament and President of the steering committee for the Italian Digital Agenda, closed the event by stimulating a discussion on current privacy issues.

“If the protection of personal data is meant to ensure fundamental rights and individual freedoms, we must prepare to extend the scope and reach of this definition to include a wide range of information related to individuals, extending the perimeter of rules and regulations presently recognised by the authorities. This new frontier will interest types of data that so far have not been treated in an extensive way. Indeed, and until recently, rules and regulations have only been applied to data capable of identifying individuals and their behaviour.

This new extension will also include data related to the individual posses-sions of people, of objects and how these relate to their producers. The data collected by platforms, almost exclusively of American origin, will not only include our communications, but also data that is produced autonomously by our gadgets and devices such as those we keep in our homes or cars.

Moreover, these data will no longer relate solely to the immaterial dimen-sion of information on individuals and their interactions or the relationship between people and services. They will also include data and information exchanged between inanimate objects such as cars or between producers and their products. Many of these autonomously generated data are still capable of providing accurate representations of our life styles, habits and consumer preferences”.

The Data Economy in Privacy, Security & Trust

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Cryptobrand is a start-up company founded in 2013 in Milan within the Speed Me Up business incubator (a consortium including Bocconi University, the Municipality of Mi-

lan and the Milan Chamber of Commerce). It is part of the EIT Digital Business Community specialised in Privacy, Security & Trust. Cryptobrand’s motto is, “Rely on Trusted Information”, meaning that if you have the right

information you can make the right decisions. The basis of its approach to providing users with trusted information is its use of digital signatures to guarantee data authenticity related to any product, verifiable by a purchaser via an app.

Cryptobrand has been involved in a series of public events at EXPO 2015 in order to present their new solution for the digital certification of food products.

People generally want to know what they eat or drink, so there is a need to verify the origin of a product and its ingredients at the time of purchase. An attractive label or a well-designed logo is not enough to guarantee quality. Think about the new logo presented at EXPO 2015 last May, “The Extraordinary ITALIAN TASTE”, aimed at protecting and promoting Italian products abroad. How can people outside of Italy identify and distinguish this new logo? There are already hundreds of similar logos on the market, so there is much room for confusion! More-over, such a logo will not be applied directly to Italian products and will appear only during specific marketing campaigns. In this context, logos of “Italian Sounding” products can also be part of the campaign, further increasing the risk of confusion. “Italian Sounding” products are

very common at the international level. One can think of “Parmesan” or special Do-It-Yourself kits to produce such wines as Sparkling Barolo or to produce Italian cheese

like Mozzarella, in both cases simply by adding water and aromas to “magic powders” and following the instructions.

The damage done to real Italian products is huge. Around two billion euro from coun-terfeited wines alone and sixty billion from other “Italian Sounding” products, almost three times the global value of Italian exports in the agri-food industry!

While the first example is considered a crime linked to counterfeiting, the second is per-fectly legitimate since it is related to Intellectual Property and Brand Protection issues.

What Cryptobrand suggests, therefore, is not the creation of a new logo that can be easily confused but to provide people with a kind of “detector” they keep in their pocket and can use to verify the origin and quality of a product through the certified data printed on the product itself.

OK, but who certifies the quality and how? The quality will be guaranteed directly by the producer, by a certification entity, if present, or by both separately.

The novel aspect is that all the processes underlying the quality certification of a product will use digital signature services for data security. These will allow consumers to be certain of several parameters, first of all those related to who provided the certification data in the first place while ensuring that it has not been modified at a later stage.

To better understand these dynamics, we can use the example of the “DOC” certification applied to high quality Italian wine. This certification ensures that a manufacturer and any other subject involved in the certification process have abided by a set of public rules. In this context, Cryptobrand has implemented a certified workflow in which all information is digitally signed by the subject or entity that is directly responsible for the certification process,

Rely on Trusted Information: Cryptobrand

roberto Pittia general Manager

cryptobrand

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ensuring a greater degree of consumer knowledge and accountability. There are vineyard maps, the grapes produced and purchased, there is the win-emaking phase, the bottling and product analysis and finally the labelling and banding phase. The whole flow is certified by applying the digital sig-natures of the entities involved in each step of the process.

The “DOC” label can only be applied, and the wine marketed, if each phase complies with state rules and standards. How can we now link every single bottle to the certified process in or-der for it to be verifiable by the customer? The solution is based on a combination of three technologies: the digital signature to lock and certify data, a tracking system and two types of Digital Tags (QR code or RFID) used to carry such certified data and apply it to the bottle. In this way Cryptobrand ensures a unique link between the individual bottle and the broader DOC certification. All the information from the certified workflow will be legally stored in a Digital Repository. Data can be extracted from the system but nobody can modify such data once it is inserted.

By using a specific app to scan the QR tag on the bottle, the consumer can view all the certified data related to that specific bottle of wine directly on his/her smartphone, including a pdf image of the original “DOC” certificate of origin.

Without entering into too much detail, the app also has another feature that allows users to to verify the certified information regarding the origin and quality of a given product on the web (eg. e-Commerce) before completing the purchase.

The system has been implemented in order to provide users with two different types of data. In the first instance, data that is inserted in the Digital tags (so-called “static” data) is readable directly from a smartphone and is also available in offline mode. The second kind of data is sent to the smartphone when connected to the cloud. In this instance the information received, called “dynamic” data, normally contains the real time “status” of a product man-aged by the tracking system.

Cryptobrand has already obtained a patent in Italy and it is waiting for a European one. In addition to the patent, Cryptobrand also presents other unique functionalities that have been recognised as very innovative by the market.

Cryptobrand is currently supported by two main partners:InfoCert, a primary Certification Authority in Italy, provides support to implement the

Digital Signature process. It also allows for the legal storage of documents when needed. British Telecom (BT) has decided to integrate Cryptobrand in its retail platform and is

currently working with Cryptobrand mainly in the fashion market. BT claims to have searched the global market for about three years before finding the anti-counterfeiting solution supplied by Cryptobrand. Of particular interest to BT is Cryptobrand’s great flexibility: its cross-sector focus, scalable data that allows users to manage different volumes of data, compatibility with e-Commerce platforms, its ability to engage customers in the supply chain process, etc. Cryptobrand, in cooperation with its partners, is ready to begin a trial-process focussed on

the “DOC” certification labelling of high quality Italian wines. Talks are underway with the “Consorzio Colli Orientali del Friuli” and one of its associated companies, the “Zorzettig” winery.

By contributing to reduce the quantity of illicit and counterfeited products, while increas-ing consumer protection and knowledge, Cryptobrand is an instrumental tool for improving health standards and the quality of life for future generations.

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Where are the opportunities in the eID market?

daniele vitali gabriele baduini communication

valley reply

Among the activities carried out by EIT Digital in the area of Cyber Security is the FIDES project, which aims to define a technical blueprint for a federated and interoperable iden-tity management platform that is compliant with current regulations, such as eIDAS.

The innovation brought by the eIDAS regulation

eIDAS is a new regulation on electronic identification and trust services, published by the European Union on 17 September 2014 and applicable to all member states. Launched by Commissioner Neelie Kroes with the ceremonial opening of an electronically signed letter from the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Junker, eIDAS provides the opportunity to standardise and unify trusted digital identities for the digital market.The European Commission’s commitment shows how the adoption of this regulation is considered an opportunity to strengthen and boost a cross-border transaction market among member states. From e-commerce to electronic signatures, eIDAS will offer legal recognition for national electronic identities across the EU giving every EU citizen the opportunity to access public (tax, healthcare, etc.) and private (insurance, university, etc.) services outside their own country with a unique, secure and trusted identity. As stated by European Com-missioner Neelie Kroes the next steps to enforce the European digital market are digital institutions, a cornerstone of today’s digital revolution, and eIDAS’s success will depend on the challenges provided by the deployment, security and insurance of those digital identities.

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Does eIDAS enable true opportunities?The eIDAS initiative fits into the European Commission’s objective to create a “Digital

Single Market”. The commission estimates that the benefit of tearing down regulatory and technological barriers can reach 415 billion euro per year. This obviously would have a very tangible impact. Creating a single digital identity system is clearly one of the first priorities, and underlines all three policy pillars: “better online access to digital goods and services”, “an environment where digital networks and services can prosper” and “digital as a driver for growth”.

If we look back over recent years, very few enterprises managed to build consistent business models on monetising digital identities. This is clearly the first true challenge. Without one single digital identity system, the European Economic Area will hardly obtain the multi-billion results we all aim for. The eIDAS task force proudly described the regulation as an important source of growth and jobs. We cannot agree more, especially if one imagines what the eID market landscape will look like in five years. The adoption route is pretty much defined: state owned enterprises will be the early adopters, and public services will be the first service providers. This will happen in the next three years. Large enterprises – mostly telecoms and banks – will subsequently join in, not least as a means to retain clients. More service providers will then start accepting digital identities, and then the overall EU eID market will gain traction, generating jobs and competitiveness for the European Economic Area as a whole.

Examining the most likely adoption scenarios, it is clear that many challenges and some great opportunities exist. Public companies are often slow and local regulators take time to adapt legislative frameworks to new disruptive innovations. Whoever will be able in these ear-ly phases to create innovative service models can expect four or five years of very successful im-pact on the market. The challenge is great, and those who are likely to identify an exploitation path are the enterprises that today own large numbers of identities. The more qualified those identities are, the greater the chances of success. In fact, the market value of these identities will increase depending on the accuracy of the identification process done during the identity registration phase. Opportunities will diminish as the market matures. The opportunity is now and, as usual, will reward innovation and quick entry onto the market. We know it will last for four to five years before the commoditisation process begins. If you or your enterprise is planning to exploit this opportunity, you should do so with a deep sense of urgency.

The commoditisation processIt is quite clear that in the target state digital identities will become a commodity. This

will be achieved in the long-run, but it needs to be clear that any business model that is built on commodities leverages volume with low marginality. It is likely that in the long-term every nation will host very few identity providers.

Who are the actorsThe main actors are the European Council, local regulators, public or private enterprises

that aim to be service or identity providers and technology providers. The market roles they

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are competing over are that of identity providers, service providers and technology provid-ers. Identity providers will own the identity management processes, including registration, identification, authentication and insurance. Services providers will leverage the authentica-tion of identity.

Key challengesAll players are facing a number of challenges.

Regulators at the EU level need to push for the adoption of local regulations, driven by the need to raise the competitiveness of the European Economic Area. As outlined above, there are no obvious short-term compelling economic models for enterprises on the open market, therefore their stakeholders are mainly in the public sectors of member states

Private Enterprises on the open market face the challenge of making money out of the

number of identities they might have. Analysing the problem, we need to be careful in differentiating between data monetisation businesses and identity monetisation busi-nesses. Data monetisation has been wildly done in the past, while identity monetisation is new and much more challenging from a business model point of view. Enterprises that do not have strong identity databases are clearly out of the game or at the very least positioned as potential technology providers.

Public sector enterprises will be the early adopters naturally being either identity pro-viders (for example, state owned retail banks) or services providers (health and citizen services are the best examples of eID). The main challenge they face is the fact that they have to do it and therefore will not necessarily be focused on generating revenues through innovation. The market needs someone that puts in money and effort to pro-mote adoption, and those entities will likely be public sector enterprises. For example in some countries, adoption requires mandatory acceptance of eID by all public services providers. This will bring a host of technology needs to the fore.

Technology providers are the true early winners of the game. They play a very important role, as the technology is quite mature but not yet consolidated in terms of interoperability standards. Those who will actually develop and deploy early solutions will have clear pre-mium benefits in terms of applied pricing and the opportunity to drive the market adoption and standards. Some initiatives such as the EIT Digital FIDES, Stork and many more are proposing or implementing standards that can then be leveraged by technology providers.

Service providers are of two kinds: market facing and public bodies. Public bodies will be forced by regulations to be early adopters, and the challenges they will face are the lack of standardisation, of mature identity providers and weak international interoperability standards. Private service providers will likely be late adopters and the challenge for them is to understand the right moment to opt-in and start accepting digital identities.

ConclusionThere is a lot of uncertainty on every aspect, including the technology stack involved in

digital identities. From a business perspective the next five years will witness a consolida-tion of business models and more experimentations with identity and service providers. The digital identity market will be a commodity market in five years, so whoever wants to exploit uncertainty to build consistent revenues and margins should act now.

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oF iDEnTiTy.

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Leveraging the opportunities of the Data Economy @ EU EXPO 2015In the EU Pavilion at EXPO 2015, EIT Digital brought together students, start-

ups, business developers, researchers, thought leaders and industrial partners for a seminar exploring the opportunities and challenges of the Data Economy and how EIT Digital seeks to accentuate the former over the latter.

“The digital transformation of society is so dramatic that we need to keep adapt-ing to new business logics, provide for entrepreneurial education and foster new innovations in order to remain competitive”, stated the CEO of EIT Digital Wil-lem Jonker during his opening address on 7 October. Jonker also underlined how those companies that today dominate the industry are the ones that understood the true value of data, which he described as the “fuel” of the economy. “If you do not educate, you do not innovate”, noted EIT Digital Education Director Anders Flodström. In a Q&A session with doctoral candidates who shared their learning experiences, students testified on how EIT Digital education programmes differ from other academic courses. The mobility element in particular was highlighted as it gives the courses an extra dimension, allowing students to experience research and business as well as culture in other countries and organisations. In the second session, moderated by EIT Digital Node Director for Italy Roberto Saracco, the rise of the data economy and its impact on business was addressed. The panellists, representing both social and industrial views on the data economy, included: Der-rick de Kerckhove (“digital guru”), Laure le Bars (SAP), Dario Avallone (Engineer-ing), Bruno Lamborghini (AICA) and Henrik Abramowicz (EIT Digital “Future Networking Solutions” Action Line Leader).

“Networks have become invisible, most people do not think about the es-sential infrastructure needed for the use of connected devices in everyday life”, remarked Henrik Abramowicz. “The challenges ahead are to develop networking solutions at reduced costs and with a more efficient use of energy resources.” To outline the best means for expanding entrepreneurship and supporting start-ups, EIT Digital Business Director Klaus Beetz moderated a panel with repre-sentatives from three start-ups coached by the EIT Digital Accelerator – Nicola Dorigatti, from Trilogis, Riccardo Marchesi, from Societá Texe, Michele Bar-bera from SpazioDati, along with Francesco Mantegazzini, venture capitalist at MGH7 and Marco Senigalilesi, EIT Digital Business Developer. “Finding the right connection for the right team at the right moment is a complex job”, said the latter, “but it is also very rewarding when successful – it is wonderful to see how innovations become market solutions”. CSO Chahab Nastar summarised two main challenges of the data economy: managing threats (e.g. security, privacy and trust) and leveraging the opportunities (e.g. smart cities, digital factories, the wellbeing of citizens and new forms of retail). “We do this by building our organisation on openness, experimentation and agility – strengthening digital innovation and entrepreneurial education in Europe”.

marianne loor

corporate communications, eit digital, Sweden

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Background and context Back in 1876, at the very beginning of telecommunications industry, the business

relied on the sale of telephones. It was up to the consumer to roll out the needed wires to connect with another telephone. It did not take long, about a year, to realise that “con-nectivity” was the most important, and indeed expensive aspect of the business, and that no single “user” would be able to build the connectivity fabric that would support the business of selling telephones. Soon after it was realised that the cost of creating such an infrastructure could not be sustained by the sale of telephones alone. One had to charge for the use of the network resources (at that time mostly wires, followed by amplifiers, switchboard operators and much more).

The business did not change much over the following 140 years. Now it is changing, and will change radically over the coming decade. Today the business relies on the sale of (cell)phones, not the overall network. This does not mean that the network is no longer important, it just means that evolution and market drive is being led by the (cell)phone.

Like it or not, the tail is wagging the dog.Technology is now making it possible to decen-

tralise most of the functions that used to be con-solidated in the network. A few more years and (smart)phones will be an integral part of the overall network, in several cases creating a new network by themselves.

These changes are rooted in the enormous in-crease in computation and storage capabilities and the corresponding cost decreases that are making smart phones more powerful and accessible. In com-parative terms, the number of telephones being sold versus network equipment is already imbalanced in favour of the former, billions against millions, while the economic imbalance is 70 vs. 30, again favouring the phones.

Computation, including in network resources, is creating a gap between control and transport, with

Towards a Nervous System for the Digital Society

The softwarisation of Telecommunications

Antonio manzalini telecom italia,

Strategy and innovation – future centre

sDn nFV:

sDn and nFV, together with Cloud and edge Com-puting, can be seen as facets of a broader systemic innovation wave (called softwarisation) that is trans-forming the overall telecommunications and iCt ecosystems. On the one hand, the border between networks and Cloud-edge Computing platforms will gradually disappear. On the other, the distinc-tion between networks and future “terminals” (e.g., including machines, smart things, drones, robots) will also blur. this transformation will have profound techno-economic impacts, paving the way for the Digital society and the Digital economy.

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control basically becoming software based (and as such it can be allocated anywhere, in the network, in phones, in service centres, etc.) and transport being so effective that it no longer needs to save resources. The pipes are so big that anything goes, it does not matter if it is no longer optimised.

Because of this phenomena, we are today witnessing a growing attention for Soft-ware-Defined Network (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) pro-posing well-known paradigms over the past years: respectively, a clear separation of hardware and software and virtualisation. The rediscovered interest in said paradigms (at the basis of SDN and NFV) is most probably motivated by the novelty of the overall context, specifically concerning techno-economic sustainability issues, given the achieved levels of performance of IT, ultra-broadband and the associated cost reductions.

Let us first summarise the basic definitions of SDN and NFV. The SDN paradigm concerns separation of the software (e.g., control plane of a router) from the hardware (e.g., data plane in charge of packets forwarding).

In principle, this is applicable to any node of a telecommunication network (e.g., a switch, a router or transmission equipment). Another key aspect of SDN is the possibility of executing said (decoupled) software even outside the equipment, for example on dedicated IT servers or even in a Data Centre (e.g., Cloud Computing). Programmability (via APIs) of said control software is a third aspect characterising SDN.

NFV relates to the virtualisation of network functions (e.g. middle-boxes, from ISO OSI Layer 4 to Layer 7) and their dynamic allocation and execution on general purpose hardware (e.g., x86). It is clear from the above definitions that SDN and NFV are not directly dependent, but on the other hand, they are mutually beneficial: when coupled together, they amplify the potential for innovative impact on telecommunications infra-structure.

So SDN and NFV will impact the evolution of legacy networks (as initially consid-ered): it is argued that the SDN and NFV paradigms are facets of an overall systemic transformation, called softwarisation, that will also innovate Computing architectures (from Cloud to Edge to Fog Computing) and even the role of terminals.

in PrinCiPlE, sDn

is aPPliCaBlE To

any noDE oF a

TElECommuniCaTion

nETwork (E.g., a

swiTCh, a rouTEr

or Transmission

EquiPmEnT).

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Softwarisation will represent a new and impactful paradigm shift in telecommu-nications with far reaching implications: it will not simply be like introducing a new technology or layer (as it was for SDH, IP/MPLS, etc.). In fact, in the past telecom-munications infrastructure was always built with purpose-built equipment designed for specific functions; these pieces of equipment were provided by Technology Provid-ers as “closed boxes” including the hardware, software and its operating system. In the future, the decoupling of software from hardware, the virtualisation of IT and network physical resources and the growing availability of Open Source software will allow de-

veloping and managing network and service functions as applications, made-up of chains of open source software components.

Eventually, this innovative approach will bring cost reductions (both CAPEX and OPEX) for Network Op-erators and Service Providers, it will create new socio-economic development for the Digital Society and new business opportunities will emerge, all of this paving the way for a true Digital Economy. On the other hand, the entire value-chain of several industries will change, requir-ing appropriate exploitation strategies.

In fact, softwarisation is lowering investment “thresh-olds” for new Players to enter the telecommunications and

ICT markets: this orientation of the business towards OPEX-centric models will also cre-ate new roles, relationships and potentially unexpected changes in current value chains.

In summary, it is argued that softwarisation is a very complex transformation (it is not just about the introduction of another technology or layer network in the current infrastructure): importantly, it concerns not only the network but also the software service platforms and the future role of terminals. In this respect, beyond techno-logical aspects, softwarisation implies business sustainability and strategic regulatory issues.

Future telecommunications and ICT scenariosIn essence, software-hardware decoupling and the virtualisation of functions and ser-

vices can be seen as the “common denominator” of a transformation in which SDN, NFV and the evolution of Cloud towards Edge and Fog Computing represent converg-ing expressions.

In fact, today, beyond the well-known Cloud Computing paradigm, Edge and Fog Computing are getting increasing attention and momentum. Edge Computing concerns the exploitation and use of processing and storage resources and capabilities at the edge of current infrastructures, for example (but not only) in the distribution Point of Presence (PoP). Among the main technical motivations behind Edge Computing, is the potential increase of performance when executing services closer to users (due to reduced Return Trip Time or latency). Akamai Edge Computing and CDN architectures, for example, go in this direction: as is known, TCP represents a serious performance bottleneck for video and other large files (as it requires receiver acknowledgment) and throughput is inversely related to Return Trip Time (RTT) or latency. It is impossible to provide HD quality streams if the servers are not relatively closed to the users. Additionally, IP is energy hungry and this does not fit well with many IoTs that have to use power in very conservative ways.

Fog Computing pushes this paradigm even further, up to the end users’ terminals and devices, which are storing data and executing pieces of service logics locally.

on ThE oThEr

hanD, ThE EnTirE

ValuE-Chain oF

sEVEral inDusTriEs

will ChangE, rEquiring

aPProPriaTE

EXPloiTaTion

sTraTEgiEs.

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This migration of processing and storage, and as such the application “intelligence”, towards the periphery of networks is fuelled by the previously mentioned IT trends, the diffusion of ultra-broadband and by the availability of more powerful user terminals and consumer electronic devices.

As another impact of this evolution, it is likely that very powerful network and service platforms will be exploited at the edge of current infrastructures: said platforms will be capable of carrying out a substantial amount of storage and real time computation (rather than relying just on centralised Cloud Computing) for the provision of communications and several ICT services.

In general, Service Providers and Network Operators that fully exploit softwarisa-tion will eventually see dramatic cost reductions (e.g., an estimate of 40%-50% CAPEX savings), improved efficiency in the overall Operations processes (e.g., about 35%-45% OPEX savings only by introducing automated configurations and other optimisations), dramatically reduced time-to-market (up to minutes, hours) and eventually much greater flexibility (than today) for new emerging service paradigms (e.g., API-services economy). As a matter of fact, however, cost savings will not be enough for the future sustainability of the telecommunications business: as such, softwarisation and its potential to create new sources of revenue should be developed through these new paradigms.

In this respect, “Immersive Communications” and “X as a Service” are two promising areas to look at. In fact, beyond the “commoditisation” of current communication para-digms (e.g., voice, messaging, etc.), new forms of communications (e.g., artificially intel-ligent avatars, cognitive robot-human interactions, etc.) will require ultra-low latency and highly flexible platforms that are not yet available today.

Moreover, it is likely that intelligent terminals, devices and machines, drones and ro-bots will allow for a number of impacts: improving industrial and agricultural efficiency, developing new models of decentralised micro-manufacturing, improving efficiency in public processes, saving energy, fully “digitalising” the Economy and enabling new sus-tainable ICT ecosystems.

Already today we are witnessing a growing interest in using drones, robots and au-tonomous machines in industry, agriculture, mining, security and other domains. In ag-riculture, for example, autonomous machines can be used for tasks like crop inspection, targeted use of water and pesticides, actions and monitoring to assist farmers, as well as in data gathering, exchange and processing for optimising the production and distribution processes. Cloud Robotics and Industry 4.0 paradigms are full of other potential use-cas-es. In general, these are ideal contexts where a SDI can control and operate in real time autonomous machines (as if they were nodes) for a number of different applications. Inter-estingly, APIs can be opened to end-users and third parties to develop, programme and pro-vide any related services and applications for pursing specific tasks.

Another example of a scenario where soft-warisation can produce a substantial econom-ic impact is the progressive digitalisation and automation of enterprises. It will allow for the exploitation of feedback mechanisms (based on almost real-time big data processing) to improve performance and the productivity

Towards a “nervous system” for the Digital Society.

…ThE ProCEssEs

oF EnTErPrisEs Can

BE maPPED in hugE

DaTa sETs, whiCh

Can BE ProCEssED

wiTh Big DaTa

analyTiCs anD

CogniTiVE mEThoDs

To aCTuaTE anD ThEn

oPTimisE oPEraTions.

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of processes through the self-correction of (internal and external) actions. In fact, the processes of enterprises can be mapped in huge data sets, which can be processed with big data analytics and cognitive methods to actuate and then optimise operations. This will pave the way for global enterprise digital environments where Large Enterprises (LE)

and SMEs can play multiple roles cooperating and competing in global markets in a more effective, dynamic and flexible way.

In all these examples, soft-warisation will allow: i) sens-ing and collecting massive data (by any sensor, terminal, smart thing and intelligent machine);

ii) quickly exchanging/accessing sets of data (via optical and mobile networks with ultra-low latency); iii) using A.I. methods, algorithms, heuristics for elaborating big data (with Cloud/Edge and Fog Computing resources) in order to infer decisions that will eventually be used used to initiate local actions (by any actuator). Taking a bio-inspired metaphor, this is really how a “nervous system” works: that is why many argue these transformations will pave the way for the development of a “nervous system” for the Digital Society

International activitiesThere are a number of reference architectures looking at the softwarisation of tel-

ecommunications infrastructures. To mention some of them: the SDN reference archi-tecture from ONF, the NFV reference architectures from ETSI, those from ONLab (e.g., ONOS, X-OS), OpenDayLight, the one from OpenStack, plus all the reference archi-tectures coming from other RT&D and Innovation projects as well as other initiatives worldwide (e.g., H2020).

The main goal of the EIT Digital funded activity “SDN At the Edge”, led by Telecom Italia, is to accelerate the exploitation of SDN and NFV at the edge of current infrastruc-tures in order to produce business impact. The activity has three objectives: i) defining SDN and NFV requirements, validation procedures and best practices in order to specify the framework to establish a Certification Centre for the Business Acceleration of SDN and NFV; ii) deploying field-trials to develop and validate two main use-cases (swarm for home gateway and edge virtual services); iii) defining and testing new business models supporting the transition towards softwarisation.

Conclusions

broad-band diffusion and ICT performance acceleration coupled with cost reductions are boosting innovation in several social and industrial sectors thus creating the condi-tions for a socio-economic transformation called softwarisation.

The softwarisation of telecommunications will allow for the virtualisation of all net-work and service functions, executing them in software platforms fully decoupled from the physical infrastructure. Attention is focussed here on the edge of current telecom-munications infrastructures (i.e., access areas up to the direct proximity to users) arguing that softwarisation will transform it into a very powerful software platform supporting X-as-a-Service.

Consortium of eit - Digital Activity

“sDn At the edge”.

on ThE oThEr

hanD, ThE EnTirE

ValuE-Chain

oF sEVEral

inDusTriEs will

ChangE, rEquiring

aPProPriaTE

EXPloiTaTion

sTraTEgiEs.

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Smart Retail: innovation for the retail sectorThe retail sector is experiencing dramatic changes under pressure from

on-line commerce. New technologies can be leveraged to comple-ment on-site experience with the on-line features shoppers have become accustomed to.

Bridging the electronic/physical commerce divide is the main driver for the High Impact Initiative (HII) in Smart Retail carried out by EIT Digital.

This HII will bring to retailers the tools to create a seamless shopping experience for their customers whether in-store or online. Its innovations in cloud based services, in-store analytics and customer interfacing are packed into a Digital Retail Suite for shopping centres, showrooms and pop-up stores.

The HII is working to deliver a product called Digital Retail Suite (DRS) that includes with tools and applications to: A “modular platform” for the most press-

ing retailer needs;Assist retailers in understanding consumer

behaviour in-store;Assist retailers in tailoring digital messages

(right: content, place and moment);Enhance customer experience in order to

increase sales and conversion rates;Enable interaction between customers and

physical sales assistants;Allow physical stores to remain competi-

tive compared to purely online retailers;Allow the transfer of personalised information from smartphones to

large screens;

The Smart Retail DRS, will allow retailers to run their IT operations from the cloud services, which will increase the loyalty and engagement of consumers, both online and in-store.

The DRS will support retailers to increase on-line conversion rates by 10%.

Thus, the HII team believes that the short-term impact of the activity can be measured from the business perspective via the application of ROI index, whilst the long-term goals can be measured from the societal per-spective by applying the Social ROI index.

The Smart Retail HII guarantees continuous innovation throughout the whole retail value chain until 2017. Beyond that date, innovation will be fostered by off-spring companies that are incubated in the activity.

Smart Retail HII pursues high-end impact through the strong com-mitment of EIT Digital partners working in collaboration with the most

Sandro battisti

activity Leader for the eit digital High impact initiative Smart retail

Thus, ThE hii TEam BEliEVEs ThaT ThE

shorT-TErm imPaCT oF ThE aCTiViTy

Can BE mEasurED From ThE BusinEss

PErsPECTiVE Via ThE aPPliCaTion

oF roi inDEX, whilsT ThE long-TErm

goals Can BE mEasurED From ThE

soCiETal PErsPECTiVE By aPPlying

ThE soCial roi inDEX.

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important stakeholders in the retail sector. New models of collaboration with stakeholders and customers on a daily basis will enable EIT Digital partners to deliver disruptive solutions for pressing current issues, thus revolutionising the whole retail value chain in Europe.

Data as a lever for smart retail

Omnichannel data is increasingly becoming an important source of busi-ness opportunities in smart retail environments. Consumers expect to have a seamless experience in store, as well as anywhere online, that best fits their shopping needs.

Customers are becoming omnichannel in their thinking and behaviour, and retailers are increasing their use of analytics to capture omnichannel opportunities. An illustrative example of this phenomenon is that 35% of Amazon purchases and 75% of Netflix watching is based on personalised marketing and recommendations.

The creation of an ecosystem where retailers can be aware about pur-chase decisions and customers can express their own intentions is a key variable for success. This kind of data ecosystem creates a bridge between

electronic and physical commerce, and stimulates con-sumers to make efficient choices thus increasing the speed of innovation diffusion, which is crucial for dis-ruptive innovation.

What is the role of e-commerce in smart retail?

E-commerce is the primary driver that characterises the emerging changes in the retail landscape. It affects all retail sectors, enabling transparency levels in terms of prices of products and customer reviews. E-commerce enables new alternatives for customers, increasing sale competition among companies.

Physical retailing will retain an important role (for example, nearly 50% of non-grocery online shoppers first visit a physical store, according to an IBM study of 26,000 customers in 14 countries), however, in this vi-sion, shops will increasingly resemble showcase rooms where customers can touch merchandise, whilst the ac-tual sale takes place in the cyberspace.

Clearly, this would lead to a revolution in the value chain.

What drivers are impacting smart retail?The expected high impact of Street Smart Retail will

derive from a combination of business and societal driv-ers. From a business perspective: EIT Digital innova-tions will enable the creation of an environment where

who is Bringinghii smarT rETail To liFE?

the following eit Digital partners work to-gether, in the eit Digital nodes of Berlin, trento and Helsinki, on the high impact initiative smart retail: Aalto universityBritish telecomCnrDFKiDeutsche telecomengineeringFBKForum Virium Helsinkinokia technologiesphilipspolitecnico di Milanoreplytechnical university of Berlintelecom italiatrento riseuniversity of HelsinkiVtt.Furthermore, several sMes are collaborat-ing with eit Digital partners for the success of smart retail in europe and worldwide.

omniChannEl DaTa is inCrEasingly

BEComing an imPorTanT sourCE

oF BusinEss oPPorTuniTiEs in smarT

rETail EnVironmEnTs. ConsumErs

EXPECT To haVE a sEamlEss

EXPEriEnCE in sTorE, as wEll as

anywhErE onlinE, ThaT BEsT FiTs

ThEir shoPPing nEEDs.

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retailers can provide customers the experience of an online con-nected retail. This environment will increase the competitive advantage of SMEs, enabling them to provide new products via multiple channels and to differentiate against global competitors.

With Smart Retail solutions, the bigger European retailers can leverage opportunities coming from omnichannel retailing in order to win on the global market by bridging B2C e-commerce with physical commerce.

Furthermore, our platform, based on omnichannel data, will enable global competition in the retail sector, as well as opening new business opportunities for “European Smart Retailers” to achieve and keep long-term competitive advantage against well-established global players. From a societal perspective: understanding the hidden and future needs of cus-tomers is a crucial factor for retailers.

These can potentially be addressed by the Smart Retail HII, in order to enable societal impact in Europe. In this way, EIT Digital’s consortium of partners, SMEs and stakeholders are building the mind-set for coping with customer needs while bringing disruptive innovations closer to the daily lives of people.

Moreover, HII expects to support European SMEs in the current hy-percompetitive retail landscape, in order to enable the creation of new jobs and thereby improve quality of life.

The DRS solution has been fully accepted and tested by customers in Italy, Germany and Finland and more than ten customers have signed early adoption agreements. These will provide feedback for product im-provement.

Moreover, two customers purchased DRS applications in Italy, which have been commercialised by Reply Group, a partner actively working at the core development of the Digital Retail Suite.

wiTh smarT rETail soluTions,

ThE BiggEr EuroPEan rETailErs Can

lEVEragE oPPorTuniTiEs Coming

From omniChannEl rETailing

in orDEr To win on ThE gloBal

markET By BriDging B2C E-CommErCE

wiTh PhysiCal CommErCE.

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App opportunities in Service - Guidance - Social innovation

I was invited by EIT-ICT to a series of encounters at Milan’s Expo 2015, under the wing – and the Pavillion - of the European Commission. I

heard and commented on several ingenious and useful applications that bring opportunities in service, guidance and social innovation. There is hope indeed in such initiatives and EIT-ICT is the right instrument to support them. However, during my research, I found that, in spite of the importance of digital media in all fields of activity, as of yet there has not been much evidence of increased job availability in Europe. Part of the problem is that employment is now shifting hands from the pro-ducer to the consumer as is so often the case with digital production and distribution media. Americans have been able to capitalise on that shift a lot quicker.

The “Data Economy” is happening in deep, pervasive and quickening waves. There are systemic changes in progress. Among their conditions is first and foremost an irresistible trend towards transparency. Follow the pat-tern of “revelations” leading from Wikileaks and Edward Snowden’s leaks to Swissleaks, and you will probably reach the conclusion that we are mov-ing from the secrecy of institutions to revelations about single individuals. While the trend will most likely reduce the potential for fraud, it will also reduce the individual freedoms of the “man on the street”. Yesterday I was liberated by the internet, today we are its prisoners. It is telling that an insti-tution as solid, powerful and trusted as Volkswagen would see its reputation tarnished by the creeping transparency of everything.

Thanks to Big Data, the buying and voting motivations of the common man are henceforth driven by a “digital unconscious”, that is, all the data about or from a person that accumulated in the connected databases of the world and that governments and businesses use to guide your choices. The value of such a hidden service is ambiguous in that it reduces the choices presented to the users so as to fit their profiles. Furthermore, it also collects sensitive information about them, something that was made evident by the Ashley-Madison hackers. The so-called “Reputation Capital” that concerns individuals just as much as companies, marks the return of the culture of shame.

A new Social Contract based on mutual trust will have to be drawn between governing and governed in all institutions and businesses. Our responsibility as individuals is also shifting from self-centredness (a cor-relation of guilt) to relatedness and world-centredness. Calls for sus-tainability are thus yet another deep-seated drive into the future of the economy.

But, new opportunities are being created by this drive. People talk about an economy of sharing. Indeed, crowd-funding, for example, could be the next wave impacting more oppressive and exclusive forms of investment.

derrick de Kerckhove

Scientific director Media duemila

Thanks To Big DaTa, ThE Buying

anD VoTing moTiVaTions

oF ThE Common man arE

hEnCEForTh DriVEn By a “DigiTal

unConsCious”, ThaT is, all ThE

DaTa aBouT or From a PErson ThaT

is aCCumulaTED in ThE ConnECTED

DaTaBasEs oF ThE worlD anD ThaT

goVErnmEnTs anD BusinEssEs

usE To guiDE your ChoiCEs.

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ThE main ProBlEm wiTh ThE

ConTinuous BuilD-uP oF our

DigiTal unConsCious is ThaT

iT PuTs us in a ComPlETEly

DiFFErEnT PosiTion From our

FaCE-To-FaCE EnCounTErs.

Crowd-funding means putting one’s money where one’s heart is. Another wave, that is not too far behind, could be dubbed the “economics of per-sonal data”. To this day, personal data is still another person’s business, but that could change.

The main problem with the continuous build-up of our digital un-conscious is that it puts us in a completely different position from our face-to-face encounters. When I speak, it is I who decides what to say and what not to declare or reveal. The rest of my thinking stays in my mind. That, of course, is absolutely not the case with all the digital traces I leave behind, as I engage in any digital transaction. Just imagine a system that would keep all my moves in my possession, something like blockchain, the software used by Bitcoin to secure transactions. My data is mine to keep, or sell, at my own discretion.. What this implies is that I would have the same control over what I did digitally to what I say vocally. That power is so desirable that it will probably make its way to the Net. In the context of its Privacy, Security & Trust program, EIT-ICT has been working on different strategies of protection. Among their most promising projects are:

Ideal privacy via homomorphic encryption (CEA LIST);Digital identity management (Poste Italiane);Mobile privacy and security (F-Secure);Mobile anti-malware protection (Reply);Behavioral biometric authentication (University of Trento);High-security smartphone (Technical University of Berlin);

Big Data, the electronic oracle, is a profound game-changer. It ranks among the more powerful buzzwords that have literally created industries, such as Cloud Computing, Internet of Things or Smart Cities. Big data is bigger. That too will soon get into the hands of people, as open and user-friendly software emerges from the race towards Data Analytics. It is a cog-nitive revolution forging its course first in business, but soon in schools and

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universities, handing its enormous power over to young minds. The secret of Big Data is that its value depends on the question, not on the informa-tion or the answer. In Big Data, there simply isn’t any answer in any form until a question has been asked. So the emphasis of learning will shift from proposing the right answer to formulating the right question. The economy will follow.

So what are the fields in which the use of new technologies would create jobs? Prime examples are AirBnB or Uber, two digital compa-

nies that are creating millions of jobs the world over. Another context of job creation, or at least profitable employment is the “Long Tail” of apps that imaginative people produce all over the planet. Big Data will become an unending source of innovation. To which one can add the 3D printer, a magical way to produce objects on demand that can be designed to the utmost precision by 3D software. What can emerge from this “manufacture 2.0”, if not the realisa-tion of Karl Marx’s wildest dream, that is, “to put the means of production in the hands of the

worker”. The further advantage of the combination of atoms and bits is that it is both location and time free. One can design at one point and produce at another irrespective of the distance between the points, or of the number of production points.

The result is a radical redistribution of work and employment at low entry level (either for skills or money). On the one hand, thanks to 3D printing, User-Generated-Content will multiply pertinent and measured production in every department even as it addresses objects and produces them on demand, and on the other, User-Generated-Employment will tip the balance between formal and self-employment. Hence it should be in-cluded in national quota estimates.

Is there a need for a European policy? Certainly: 1. First find ways to compensate those who lose jobs or their pension ex-

pectations (UBER and BlablaCar, for example threaten the revenue of taxi drivers not only by coopting their rides, but also reducing the value of their licence, a capital most of them depend on for retirement).

2. Reclaim and automate tax revenue at the source from services such as Uber or AirBnB and also from self-appointed drivers. In a transparent society, the Uber and AirBnB of the world, as well as all the enterprises now abusively protected by tax-sheltered schemes would have to contribute to the common good and so would Google and Facebook.

3. Regulate the questions of competence (supervision, certification and insurance).

4. Arrive at a point of equilibrium between traditional and disruptive occupations that would better support start-ups and initiatives and thus encourage User-Generated-Employment.

In closing, I wish to express my gratitude to EIT-ICT for the opportu-nity to participate in a series of truly dynamic meetings with researchers and key member of the European Community.

whaT Can EmErgE From This

“manuFaCTurE 2.0”, iF noT ThE

rEalizaTion oF karl marX’s

wilDEsT DrEam, ThaT is, “To

PuT ThE mEans oF ProDuCTion

in ThE hanDs oF ThE workEr”.

ThE FurThEr aDVanTagE oF ThE

ComBinaTion oF aToms anD BiTs

is ThaT iT is BoTh loCaTion anD

TimE FrEE.

[email protected] 01.07.2010 09:49 ARC BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN

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