SESERV project to hold Workshop: “The Future Internet: The Social Nature of Technical Choices”

By Malena Donato Cohen, Atos Origin

The SESERV project studies, analyzes and fosters a thoughtful debate to help shape the Future Internet, of which cloud and distributed computing are an integral part, through concentrating on Socio-Economic aspects.

SESERV, aka Socio-Economic Services for European Research is a 2-year European support action project selected by the European Commission to be funded through FP7.
SESERV kicked off in September 2010, and its goal is to bridge the gap between those who study and those who “build the Internet” – or shape the Future Internet - by supporting discussion and debate within a multidisciplinary community of researchers and professionals working on Future Internet Socio Economics.

Motivation
The motivation for SESERV is that nowadays the Internet has become a central part of social life. People use the internet to communicate, to express ideas, and even more with the increasing importance of social networking and interaction to build relationships. The internet and its architecture will be enhanced to meet societal challenges and evolve as society develops. People not only use the internet but have become without a doubt truly internet-dependent. The Internet has evolved and grown to an unprecedented and unique size and such changes have an impact on the evolution of society. Thus, the Internet of the future is facing some challenges, as there are an increasing numbers of users, providers, services, and so on, and it needs to be shaped and defined to meet user demand and needs.

The goal
Thus, in this project, the aim is to discuss and analyze what the socio-economic challenges and future trends of the Future Internet are. And the idea behind this project would be to help to maximize the impact of research by raising the awareness of socio-economic trends in the areas of incentives, accounting, Digital Europe, and risk management ,whilst, at the same time, addressing possible policy priorities within the research community across key dimensions of the convergence of information technology, telecommunications, and media.
SESERV was inspired on the back of the Future Internet Assembly (FIA), which is a European initiative looking to define and shape the Future Internet. FIA grew out of collaboration across diverse research projects seeking to maintain European competitiveness in the global marketplace. As such, the SESERV project looks to engage with the FIA community to co-ordinate discussion from a socio-economic perspective for Future Internet development.

The Workshop
Project partners are studying the work done shaping the Future Internet through white papers, research consultancy and workshops created across the collective of research projects. In this context, SESERV is holding a workshop at the end of this month (June 28th) that intends to set the basis for an open and deep discussion about shaping the Future Internet, and where stakeholders will describe how the latest technology developments are facing socio-economic realities.
People from different profiles will attend with the idea of fostering open discussion and debate to shape the basis for the future of the internet, such as experts in FI technology, researchers, academics, social scientists and economists, and policy experts. Particular attention will be given to the methods and approaches that facilitate the creation of multidisciplinary networks of collaboration and knowledge exchange.
The event will offer an opportunity to analyze how to understand the future of the Internet as a platform that can foster innovation, collaboration and knowledge transfer. The results of this event will be written up as a whitepaper, and considered for possible publication.

SESERV will host the Workshop on: “The Future Internet: The Social Nature of Technical Choices” next June 28th in St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, UK Click here for further information

Project web site: www.seserv.org/