Abstract

This talklets session will feature three speakers from the SRG group: Helen Oliver, Desi Hristova and Heidi Howard

Title: The HAT Project and the Automagic Box of Beauty

Speaker: Helen Oliver

Abstract: The ‘Automagic Box of Beauty’ is a use case of the HAT Project. HAT stands for Hub-of-all-Things, and provides a personal data store built on the principle of privacy by design and returning ownership of personal data to the individual. The Beautybox is an example that shows the HAT ’s potential for realizing the Internet of Things within an ecosystem which allows the user to contextualize data from a variety of sensors and sources.

Title: Multilayer Brokerage in Geo-Social Networks

Speaker: Desi Hristova

Abstract: Open network structures and brokerage positions have long been seen as playing a crucial role in sustaining social capital and competitive advantage. However, the degree to which individuals intermediate between otherwise disconnected others can differ across online and offline social networks. I will describe a geo-social multilayer approach to brokerage that casts light on the integrated online and offline foundations of social capital by empirically drawing on a data set of 37K Foursquare users in London, extending the notion of brokerage by examining users’ positions in an online social network and their offline mobility patterns through check-ins.

Title: Unanimous: Resilient consensus for the Internet edge

Speaker: Heidi Howard

Abstract: Many projects in the lab at the moment are trying to give individuals an viable alternative to 3rd party centralised services and put them back in control of their personal data. However developing applications for the hostile edge network, with its heterogeneous hosts and networks, trust issues and poorly understood middleware is tricky. This is made worse by the fact that consensus algorithms are famously difficult to use, underspecified and based on decade old assumption about the internet. In this talk, I will motivate the need for a new consensus algorithm for the modern Internet and outline our approach to building such an algorithm.