Much of the personal data that's harvested by all the connected devices that make up the IoT is hoarded, and often exploited, by a relatively small number of commercial organisations. As the quantity and quality of the data we share about ourselves increases, so will concern about how that data is being stored, shared and used. Making sense of all this data, while also protecting the personal privacy of end-users, is going to become a huge challenge. Add machine-to-machine interaction into the mix (there are already far more machines than people connected to the Internet), and it looks like the Internet is going to need a bigger boat!
That being the case, what would an entirely new kind of Web actually look like? Web 1.0 was entirely made up of static web pages connected by hyperlinks. Web 2.0 aka the "Social Web" emphasised user-generated content, usability, and interoperability. What is needed now is a third Web that enables both people and machines to interact seamlessly via a decentralised, democratic web. By using the blockchain to remove the need for servers, innovations such as Ethereum and IPFS could define Web 3.0 in the same way that HTTP/IP defined Web 1.0 - hence the importance of the blockchain.
18:15 - 18:20 REGISTRATION & WELCOME
18:20 - 18:30 Simon Montford (WEB3//IOT)
Open Forum; members are invited to make announcements, share news, seek project collaborators, promote their IoT events, and request topics for future Meetups.
18.30 - 18.50 James Littlejohn (Dsensor)
James will start by explaining how smart contracts work. He will then provide a brief history of this game-changing technology, followed by an overview of how it is being used today. He will then demonstrate how smart contracts can be used to securely interact with health data via the private Ethereum blockchain.
18:50 - 19:10 Dave Murray-Rust (University of Edinburgh)
Dave will talk about some participatory design work carried out at the Design and The City conference in Amsterdam, to help people understand the blockchain. This includes a workshop based around lego and values, and an "unfinished software" session, where halfbaked prototypes are given over to the public to play with. We'll see some of the applications they came up with, discuss which aspects of the blockchain were important, and think about where this could take us.
