9.1. Introduction

The emergence of a new technology, such as the Internet, always has shattering and awesome effects that anesthetize any critical thinking [PAR 02]. Only after a period of habituation time, of varying length, do we become aware of its properties and can we evaluate its real contribution in the improvement of our lives; we also discover its adverse effects, weaknesses and identify the difficult situations that could not be improved, etc. Indeed, people’s thinking is gullible and truth always requires a time delay to be disclosed. Thus, we are entering a phase of disappointment or disillusionment.

These variations in appraising the introduction of a new technology can be shown in Figure 9.1 showing what we experienced at IBM each time we were introducing a new solutioning approach (multivariate analysis in production management, knowledge-based systems in test and diagnosis area, operation research in logistics, office digitization, etc.).

In Figure 9.1, the magnitude of phenomena, overtime, is dependent on new provided opportunities and also on emerging capabilities that are actually available. As soon the “productivity plateau” is reached, we come to adopt a new, specific and stable behavior (steady state). The following examples apply to a non-professional population:

• – watching a new generation of TV set: viewers are at first subject to a surprisingly and pleasant stupefaction; they then progressively feel passive and their critical attitude starts to lower;
• – Internet usage: now, the Web enhances the capabilities and potentialities of each person because they are connected online, for free, anywhere, regardless of the time, in any field (industry, commerce, multimedia, etc.). The actions undertaken are made easy, which reduces the ability to pay attention. Concentration, self-monitoring and self-control are reduced.

Sustainability: consequently, it should never get carried away when introducing either a new technology or process; it is becoming urgent to wait for a short period, and expect a better innovation process stabilization, to avoid marking a wrong decision.

9.2. Consequences associated with Web usage

The Internet is the largest open theater in the world. Anything can be seen by a large number of people. Dissemination of data can be widely done through the Youtube or Dailymotion, etc. channels. At the present time, we cannot say if only the information neutrality or communication neutrality is ensured in the Web applications. Similarly, we do not know if a legal procedure, or a security action, initiated by only one single government can stop a skid or deviance, and if a new and more global governance is required to better control the Web.

We can say, however, that the main problem raised is regarding the security of confidential information and the freedom about the free access to essential information.

Also, at a societal level, some populations of people are much more sensitive and vulnerable than others to the development of social networks: in fact, young people are quite candid, naive and unaware of some risky actions in the networks: they can act and be exposed to revisionist trends, as well as for other young people, probably more mature trends (e.g. politicians, who are sometimes showing denials of reality, or some disability in managing these social networks).

9.3. Public–private governance: a privacy process issue

Information privacy is a concept commonly perceived as a problem by all the community of people who use the Web. Here again, in terms of governance, we have to remember that a new technology is often suggested and called up by men: it sometimes anticipates and provides innovative features to answer the needs of man; but, as for any advance, it brings a lot of advantages and disadvantages. Man creates things, he controls them (sometimes more or less), but he has also the ability to defeat them. In the case of interconnected networks covering the entire planet, no single government, sometimes including a lot of unskilled and nescient people, cannot efficiently and effectively control these complex systems. By definition, within these social networks, people are interconnected as any systems existing in our living world: they are self-organized, and it is through its interconnected components (between the individual nodes) that self-control may emerge.

A main concern is related to some social networks that exploit people’s credulity: these Internet users may send personal images and messages everywhere in the network. We call this phenomenon a “user outage”. Indeed, in such situations, the Web increases the vanity of users and encourages them to become exposed. On the other hand, and to complete that negative effect description, we can say that through tweets, blogs or comments, we reinforce the concept of short and timely messages: it is a new kind of communication which impoverishes the written language … at each individual level (this approach also includes government people who communicate inside or outside government with these new mobile internet device (MID) media). This process is not addressed or controlled by governments.

To this fact, we have to add that the Web contributes to the degradation or modification of our mind; it participates in the deviance of our cultural memory, since it is subject to a lot of interpretations … not to mention that new temptations are conveyed all the time through the net, which sometimes constitute a violation of morality.

In terms of sustainability, we can say that the Web creates new sensory and cultural freedoms, but it is associated with a loss of fundamental and legal freedoms, according to emerging and well-established conformisms. They are, however, issued from a new paradigm: in terms of governance, the current authorities are late to the fight; self-regulation will spontaneously arise, guided, not by governments, but by the crowd, in a bottom-up way – that is to say by Internet users themselves. It is self-sustainability.

The lesson we need to remember is that it is useless to resist, deny or reject the emergence of a spontaneous phenomenon. When controlling systems with high inertia, linear features can easily be used. With unstable systems, it is necessary to be real-time reactive, and to be able to instantly provide a response to correct the deviation. It is the same principle in use for controlling nonlinear dynamical systems (unstable systems): it is based on electronic servo–mechanisms. In aerospace, it is the way to gain control of unstable systems intentionally designed by man to provide highly reactive aircraft. In the case of the Web, human beings have created unstable interactive systems to make communicating and exchanging information highly reactive; governments have favored the emergence of such worldwide interconnected systems but they do not know how to control them, and nothing is still planned for this purpose: they can just blame themselves. It is the role of the Internet user, because he really needs it, everyday, to generate and make appropriate self-control systems.

Within this framework, we will mention the concept of the “transient Web”.

9.4. The principle of impermanence: Snapchat and Confide

All the social networks enable Internet users to exchange various messages, images and videos. There are, however, some service applications which can inhibit the resilience of the information: they disappear in a few seconds after being read by someone else. This is possible due to applications such as Snapchat or Confide.

With Snapchat, for instance, as with the BLINK application, a social network allows users to share photos with finite live durations (a few seconds). Similarly, while hundreds of millions of messages are sent every day on the net, how can we secure the information? WICKR allows you to send messages, photos or videos, which are able to self-destruct, without leaving any trace of their existence.

Under this context, Internet users can exchange and trade information and in a more spontaneous way, with intimacy, authentically and more safely because the life of the data is ephemeral. In this way, with transient data, we are valuing an instant moment. It also shows that young people become much more aware than adults to the visibility and security rules in the social networks. Snapchat is like a self-organizing phenomenon akin to self-sustainability. At the current time, it is not a perfect process since undesirable actions can still be made (e.g. fast screen capture, password theft, etc.), but it is existing.

Dispelling some concerns and risks about spreading confidential, disturbing or compromising information, we can recover the ownership of our privacy and sensitive information exchanged through a social network. This explains Snapchat’s popularity among teenagers since they can send disappearing selfies.

9.5. Extension of the applications

The notion of transient or impermanence data is interesting for the future: it avoids malicious people using confidential or private data against others (the emitter); it also protects (in part) any email application, or social communication in the organizations, i.e. the exchange of confidential information without leaving any trace or footprint.

Such a success is providing ideas and hints to many companies in different activity sectors: they now rely on immediacy, transient Web, etc. as we are going to describe.

Now, based on these experiences, companies are pitching similar software, like CONFIDE, to their corporate users to provide them with a higher level of security in their information exchange. Here, confidential text content disappears from the screen once the recipient closes it or replies, thus without exposing proprietary information.

A problem may surface, however, whenever we are dealing with official or legal constraints: indeed, some business data may require an audit trail, accountability or the retaining of electronic records, e-mails and instant messages. The approach which consists in systematically destroying information is never the best strategy when faced with difficulties. This is why an alternative has been developed which coexists in masking a document. For instance, when a message is opened, the text is covered by a colored box: only a part of the text (the one under reading) is not masked. As soon as you are reading the document, a “clear” window is moved to free the text, but the words being read are quickly masked again, making the capture of the full message within a screen shot impossible.

9.6. Pervasive network interconnections

“Name Tag” is releasing a facial recognition application for the famous Google Glass: independently of both privacy and security problems, the face recognition feature included in the glass allows the identification of the person whose face has been captured by a camera, to check whether he is a sex offender or not. This is becoming possible through connection to a database of faces available on “Facial Network.com” for glass owners. Thus, the identifier is able to login at http://www.nametag.ws, and to choose between either sending an alert, closing a communication or opening a session. Whether or not people caught with the camera want names and their own information displayed to others: if agreed, the application enables the owner of this Google Glass to directly establish online dating and offline social interactions much safer and to get a far better understanding of the people around him or her, simply by looking at someone, seeing their Facebook profile, reviewing their LinkedIn page or maybe even seeing their dating site profile.

Under this condition, there are some safeguarding procedures which allow us to be protected against privacy attacks and to connect people that want to be connected together. In addition, users may have one profile that is seen during business hours and another that is only seen in social situations. Name Tag can make the big, anonymous world we live in as friendly as a small town, just because we can recover the forgotten name behind the face of a people we have bumped into or met in a given location.

On the other hand, in terms of security governance, the role of each human being is reinforced since it is becoming possible to recover the name and location of some unknown people: the owner of a Google Glass is controlled in his actions, but he or she can also become a controller and monitor the security within the environment. Thus, in a given population, there has been a reversal of roles between controller and controlled people.

9.7. Enterprises: Web evolution and sustainability

Everyone talks about safety, such as current NSA operations, but again, it is necessary to refer back to history.

From the 17th and 18th Centuries, the concept of a disciplinary and diligent society has been developed: the aim of this concept is to “control the body to correct souls”. Later, Napoleon set up the so-called “police records”. In 1888, in France the anthropometric Legal Service was implemented. The goal was to take and record measurements in order to identify the body, head and limbs of an individual. A little bit later, some new features such as iris colorimetry, eye shape, etc. were added.

Today, we use biometrics. We are starting the 21st Century by providing much more important information in powerful storage systems. Also, data processing tools based on more sophisticated algorithms have been implemented and new possibilities are emerging: the relevant data analyses are not related to the objects under study themselves, but to their interactions. The objective is to identify and characterize the emergence of specific communities.

In this brief reminder, we can say that security issues have always been timely and relevant. The aim was to record a maximum of data leading to objects, behaviors, relationships and intentions: it is an ongoing concern, to try anticipating new situations and characteristics.

Scientific and technological advances are irreversible: it is not possible to go back. More important is the emergence of new opportunities and alternatives to current practices, applicable both to heavy industry, electronics, automotive, media, networks, etc.

Concerning security issues, experience shows that time eventually thwarts man’s productions, a fact which provides a potential parade.

You cannot have the cake and eat it too: when we benefit from a technology, such as social networks, we must suffer its consequences and find ways to protect ourselves against resulting disadvantages, hence we will wait for the emergence of new encryption techniques, to protect us against possible intrusions or malicious actions.

9.8. Additional comments about the control of instabilities

As already stated, human beings have created unstable and interconnected objects to improve responsiveness, or allow the emergence of new orders, fractal shapes, etc.

Among notable achievements, we can quote new types of aircraft (Grippen/Saab, Rafale/Dassault, etc.). Control of the aircraft uses known electronic devices. In the industry, there are a lot of examples of the same nature: planning and scheduling of complex production systems based on chaotic inventories and chaotic customer orders. Also, we can quote the emergence of crowd design, based on “social innovation” [MAS 14], to reduce the product lifecycles of new opportunities. For sure, the product specifications are highly volatile since they are emerging from the Internet.

It is the first time that man has created an unstable world it does not control, with conventional technologies. We are being pulled by a variable demand, the question we can ask is: what is the sustainability of such a varying complex system subject to many uncertainties?

• – The Web allows an Internet user to be extracted from his local world, and to dive into a new virtual world. It is also able to divert him from his conventional moral values and practices, related to his real world, and to push to focus him on himself (self-centeredness). The political world has not appraised these risks and does not know how to impose limits or practices to correct these deviations or possible deviances and mutations, at a society level. It is a real problem of sustainability.
• – The addiction to the Internet also affects the business, the commercial challenges, the component sourcing, etc. Indeed, the corporate margins of many enterprises are drastically reduced under market pressure, which has become elastic, the pressure on suppliers required to compete in a globalized world, benefits and constraints of new logistics, etc. Our economic and industrial world has become unstable. It becomes more difficult to invest or reinvest: we cannot create as many new jobs, as expected; in fact, considering worldwide competitive challenges, we are destroying more jobs than creating new ones; this is the issue facing many e-commerce players, including Walmart, La Redoute, etc.
• – Artilects. We are talking about communities of robots, swarms of people, interconnected drones, the Internet of Things, etc. This provides advantages in terms of mobility, collective intelligence, synergy between smart objects … far above all that we can expect a super smart object which could be too sophisticated and complex. The problem is the same either in industry or in the military field: it is easier and more efficient to replace a super battleship by a dozen well-armed speedboats.
• – In the administration field, it is impossible to get a quick estimate of the performance of a new tax. By using the Internet and online cloud resources, as well as distributed simulation data and calculations, we can, in near real time, get adapted, adjusted and more accurate results. This can reduce the risks and uncertainties. On the contrary, centralized systems are inoperative. Thus, in present social networks, sustainability is improved.
• – In social innovation in co-design, the emergence of new products, models or processes upsets the usual approach of the company. This is well-above approach compared to the CRM approach because it is the most innovative, relevant and consistent.

9.9. Sustainable networks

Using the concept of social networking leads to a scaling and organization networks problem. For example, a business network, or a network of networked enterprises, behaves like a network of individuals or a network of IS servers. To function properly, the network nodes must not be overloaded. Normally (with regard to the results of our simulations, with agents (network nodes) loaded up to 80%), we can get a well-balanced and profitable structure. This, therefore, implies the removal of underloaded nodes (e.g. an mfg plant including overcapacity resources), that is to say the closure of some manufacturing plants and the opening of (or enhancement) another, elsewhere. Thus, we are rebalancing the production capabilities; in doing so, we avoid undercapacities, bringing mfg and service centers near the place of use or consumption. It is a way to obtain a sustainable system; it is a question of architecture, number of interconnected manufacturing sites, load of the nodes, etc.

Other applications are quite numerous. Recently, the US car industry has closed or relocated 18 manufacturing plants over a few years. IBM has also shifted part of its production centers to Singapore … near the places of consumption or use in progress of growth.