Challenges of the Internet of Things

10 Modeling Power to Act for an Ethics of the Internet of Things

10.1. Introduction

The development of the Internet of Things has brought with it a redefinition of the boundaries of the digital technologies that are so impactful on our societies from technical, industrial, commercial, social and political perspectives [BOU 16]. The proliferation of connected objects can be seen in our everyday lives for more and more varied uses, in particular, our mobile phones, which have been transformed into platforms for exchange with our cars, our televisions and other domestic objects (refrigerator, oven, heater, etc.). The definition of these exchanges, the evaluation of their end purposes and our methods of controlling them raise numerous questions [SAL 17, NOY 17] which are not confined simply to technical issues [YAN 17, ALO 17], but which encompass the wider field of the sociosemantic usages of digital technology [ZAC 05, BAC 11, OMO 14] and, more broadly still, the domain of ethics [MOR 06, COL 16].

To contribute to current thinking¹ and open a democratic debate on the issues raised by this thinking, we propose a method of modeling of our “power to act” for the Internet of Things, with the objective of evaluating and comparing the ethics of these technologies. To do this, we are developing tools for the modeling of these connected objects in order to understand their impacts on our daily lives. The goal of this research project is to propose a simple signage system, indicating ...