The document discusses the role of human sciences in future internet design. It notes that the internet has evolved from a machine network focused on host-to-host communication to a human-centric network that blends digital and physical worlds. It is emerging as a tool to study human behavior at large scales. The structure and content of online social networks provides insights into how people interact and share information. Understanding human cognition and decision-making can inform self-aware systems for content-centric internets. A new multi-disciplinary approach is needed combining ICT and human sciences like sociology, anthropology and psychology to account for the human element in internet evolution.

1. The Role of Human Sciences in the Future Internet
design
Kick-off Meeting
Brussels, 21-22 December 2011
Marco Conti (CNR)
Network of
FP7-ICT-2011.1.6-288021 EINS Excellence in
Internet Science

2. Internet: from a machine network ……
Internet developed to
guarantee host to host
communications
It is a collection of ICT
solutions
:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011

3. …… to a human-centric network
Internet is the centre of the Cyber-Physical world Convergence:
blending ICT and physical world in a unique techno-social system
Electronic interactions!
Human interactions!
Online Social
Networks
Digital Media
p2p platforms Pervasive
Pervasive
WWW Wired Cyber world
Internet
Internet
Blogs
Cyber world
Physical
world
:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011

4. Internet is a complex techno-social system
Internet is emerging as a Big Data lab for studying and
understanding the human behaviour; i.e., a microscope of the
human society to investigate
• Mobility (e.g., human mobility patterns)
• Lifestyle and Economics (e.g., how people behave, what people
buy…)
• Sentiment analysis, opinion dynamics, ….
• Analysis of social relationships .
At the same time the human behavior is affecting the Internet
design and structure
:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011

5. Internet is evolving toward a: Human and Content-
centric network
Real, electronic and virtual communities have a major impact on the Future Internet design
Ref: SOCIALNETS (Social Networking for Pervasive Adaptation) FET Perada
project - FP7-ICT-2007-1 (2008-2011)
:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011

6. Human social networks
Human ego network Increasing social
tightness
 model of social relationships
“seen” from an individual (ego)
 concentric layers of decreasing
intimacy (emotional closeness)
 size increases approximately with a
factor 3
 contact frequency is proportional to 5
the emotional closeness
 the strength of the social links
determines the willingness to 15
provide a service and the trust in
the services we receive 50
150
Dunbar number ~ 150
:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011

7. On Line social networks
 Popular way to connect and share
» Photos, videos, blogs, profiles, news, status...
» MySpace (275 M), Facebook (175 M)
 Growing exponentially
 Large number of social links
 Large amount of information shared
» Facebook (850 M photos/month)
» YouTube (13 hours of video/min)
» Twitter (4B tweets in Q1 2010)
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:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011

8. on-line social networks: size of the ego networks
• We defined the dimension of a Facebook ego-network as the
number of active friends of a user (the subset of friends with
perceived Facebook tie strength > 0)
• Our sample: Min = 29 Max = 368 Mean = 108,17 and SD = 85,5
• The number of active friends
is correlated with the number
of status updates
• The number of status
updates is significantly
correlated with the
communication variables
Ref: SCAMPI (Service platform for social Aware Mobile and Pervasive computIng
) FIRE project - FP7-ICT-2009-1.6 (2010-2013)
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:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011

9. Content-centric Internet and Self-awareness
Human being
Collect and discovery information through a wide
range of sources, including sensors
Ability to manage huge quantities of information
ENVIRONMENT
PHYSICAL
and extract relevant knowledge to establish the
context and to decide how to react also with DATA
uncertain information
Learn from the information and implement
effective content-management policies
Network
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:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011

10. Content-centric Internet and Self-awareness
The human brain has developed effective strategies to
define what is relevant when exposed to a large
amount of information (like in a content-centric Internet)
and to elaborate and react to that information
ENVIRONMENT
The human brain is able to adjust, adapt, and resolve
PHYSICAL
situations based on imperfect information; this is DATA
achieved with high resource efficiency.
Cognitive sciences has shown that cognitive process
are algorithmic in nature (based on heurisitcs)
The models of the cognitive behaviour of the brain
provide a powerful basis for self-awareness in a content
centric internet
Network
Ref: RECOGNITION (Relevance and cognition for self-awareness
in a content-centric Internet) FET Awareness project - FP7-ICT-2009-8.5
(2010-2013)
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:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011

11. The need for a new multi-disciplinary science
 Future Internet will be human centric and hence human sciences must
work together with ICT to understand and design the Future Internet,
and to investigate how the Internet is affecting and changing the
organization of the human society.
 Sociology, Anthropology, Cognitive Sciences, Psychology are just some
relevant examples. Contributions are also expected from economics,
political sciences, …
 Important contributions can also come from other sciences. For
example, complex networks researchers contribute with the studies of
network graph structure and dynamics.
 …….
Th
anks!
:EINS Kick-off Meeting Brussels, December 21-22, 2011