“After the Internet and mobile phones, we face the next technological revolution – the Internet of Things (IoT). ... The possibilities are enormous. ... Our lives will be revolutionized once again – just as when computers entered our homes and lives. This time, we know with greater certainty in which direction the development is going. More and more things are going to connect to the internet”.

So wrote Kristina Höök and Darja Isaksson, in their recent Debatt article in Dagens Nyheter www.dn.se/debatt/gor-sverige-till-testbadd-for-sakernasinternet : “Gör Sverige till testbädd för sakernas internet”, “Sweden to become a testbed for the Internet of Things”, published 2014-03-03].

Höök, director of Mobile Life and professor in interaction design at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), joined Isaksson, the founder of the IT company Ziggy Creative Colony, to write the opinion piece for DN’s Debatt pages. Their main point: “Sweden needs to take a national approach. One suggestion is to make Sweden a global test bed for IoT-driven innovation”.

Mobile Life’s partners see an enormous number of things that will communicate with each other in the future: Ericsson sees 50 billion items connected to the Internet, and Telia, 300 million by 2020. That future is not far from now. Already, our mobile phones and other handheld devices are connected, as are items with GPS or satellite hookups, including anything that can tell us about the weather. Soon our cars will be online and talking to each other, as will the electronic devices in our homes and hospitals.

But Höök and Isaksson wrote that while companies like Google and Apple, and countries such as China, have plans for how to engage in the future Internet of Things, Sweden does not. Their intent in the Debatt article was to call for a national information policy in Sweden and plans to make the country a testbed for future services, data collection and more.

“Sweden has long been an international model for openness. We are accustomed to free access to information and ensure access principle as a matter of course. Sweden should demonstrate openness also belongs in the IT world - and that transparency can be combined with respect for personal privacy”, they wrote.

That shift will require discussion that leads to practice, in order to “combine openness and participation with regard to privacy”. But Sweden is behind in experimenting at the forefront of Internet research, and “should formulate aims to establish itself as a global test bed for innovations in the Internet of Things”.

To do this, Höök and Isakson proposed incentives and a platform to foster “innovative growth” in schools and businesses in Sweden. Private and public stakeholders will need incentives to share their information in diverse areas, including real estate, energy, healthcare, commerce, and more. “Public organizations should take the lead. Incentives could include tax deductions for investments. We also need a strategy for managing information”, they wrote. Links between academia and industry should also be fostered, to link innovative growth and investment in both schools and industries. Höök and Isakson cited

Vygandas “Vegas” Šimbelis is an artist among engineers, programmers and academic researchers. With his perspective as a practicing artist, he studies how humans and computers interact while making art together.

His art installation “Metaphone” hooks up humans to a machine reminiscent of Tinguely mechanical sculptures. From the people’s biological data – heart rates, skin signals and sweat – the computer creates abstract paintings. “It’s always different,” Šimbelis says of the final product.

Šimbelis says his research explores the connections between a monotonic machine with rhythms and movement of its own with the “pulsating” changes of the human body, which have “no such monotonic” rhythms. “Participants can feel the difference” when connected to the machine, just as the machine can be controlled through “feeling”, in a sense, the human bodies and emotions connected to it. The human participants also react according to the machine’s “rough” aesthetics, with its exposed gears and open innards.

“People want to have control” over the machine, Šimbelis says, but changing our bodies’ biological signals is really difficult. Heart rate or skin responses change with calming music or violent scenes, but calming one’s self takes practice and time. Truly, the only control a human has over the Metaphone is the choice to stop it from drawing, completing a piece of artwork.

Mobile Life is looking for Friends: companies and researchers who can both contribute and benefit to Mobile Life research, but might not wish to be full partners in the Centre. Under the new program, “Friends of Mobile Life”, half a dozen or more partners will join together to address the emerging landscape of Internet of Things (IoT).

The Centre is looking to recruit IT startups, for example, or companies working on consumer products that have never looked at the issues surrounding the IoT with the perspective of IT and Telecom companies. The first Friend, ayond, joined in March, and other companies that plan to sign up are Ziggy Creative Colony and Boris Design. The consulting company, Ayond, assists businesses in their design and technology systems, looking to the future of IoT. (One of the company’s three founders, Thomas Arctaedius, is a former board member of Mobile Life.) Other potential Friends include media or advertising companies with an interest in IoT, but not necessarily an active interest in IT or Telecom, nor experience in those research areas.

Mobile Life will offer these companies the chance to network with each other, as well as with Mobile Life’s current partners. Eventually, the Friends will have a chance to decide if they want to join the researchers as full partners, which requires a higher annual fee.

The recruitment of Friends of Mobile Life comes at a time when the research centre has refocused its plan to study trends for IoT, an important and strategic shift to a topic that is important to the IT and Telecom companies that are currently Mobile Life’s

Q: Why work with Mobile Life?
RB: When I joined Telia Research twenty years ago, we were more than 600 researchers. We were in the technical forefront in many, many areas. Since then, TeliaSonera has changed a lot. There are no longer any dedicated research units within TeliaSonera. R&D is now mostly done by other actors in the ecosystem, especially the supplier side. Typically, we buy things from a supplier or partner, which is combined with in-house work, and this is then offered to our customers.

‘Disruptive product innovation’ is still key but to a small degree done in-house. These are the things that Mobile Life and other players work with and which we want to partner with. They have their sensors to the ground to understand and experiment with what’s coming next. Even if we don’t do a lot in early phases anymore, it’s still as important to understand where the world is going.

We have been a partner in Mobile Life since the beginning. We want to be connected in this context. It’s also about corporate social responsibility, i.e. supporting good and important research in our geographical footprint.

Q: What were your expectations for outcomes from the partnership?
RB: Our main focus is on today’s business. But we need to understand what’s coming next. The main expectation from Mobile Life is that we jointly create that understanding. We are open with contributing our knowledge. Then, Mobile Life has the task to come up with disruptive ideas and demos. I would like to be surprised by the findings of what may be possible to do in the not-too-distant future!

We do not expect Mobile Life to take the ideas all the way to a product. But it is very good that Mobile Life support the commercialization of strong concepts.