Physical-Cyber-Social Computing: Looking Back, Looking Forward

I n the last 30 years, the vision to connect all computers and devices over a global network and the idea of sharing and connecting various contents and types of data using hyperlinks, as promulgated by Tim Berners Lee, profoundly impacted our lives. Building on this premise, in the last 15 years we connected different humans and their information to this Web to yield a composite Cyber-Social Web. Emerging trends in the Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile technologies show the value of connecting these cyber and social webs with physical world objects and embedding them into various applications and daily life activities. The interconnection of physical, cyber, and social data and services lets us break free of the realms of the cyberworld, and augment or interact with physical and social phenomena and real-world objects. Opportunities abound for combining and augmenting data into useful applications that help with our surroundings. For example, in a hurricane scenario, someone might wonder, Are my family members in safe locations? What is the safest route to pick them all up and go to a shelter location? And in more of a day-to-day scenario that same person might wonder, Which is the nearest restaurant rated with four stars by my friends? These applications need an awareness of the physical world, such as the location or current outside weather condition, the cyber information sources publicly available (for example, Wikipedia), and the surrounding social context or record of interactions on social media. To support these applications, physical-cyber-social (PCS) computing is defined as a framework that “takes a human centric and holistic view of computing by analyzing observations, knowledge, and experiences from physical, cyber, and social worlds” (http://wiki.knoesis.org/index. php/PCS).1 Essentially, PCS computing provides multiple applications in domains spanning from emergency response to healthcare, security, tourism, and everyday living. Examples of PCS applications Payam Barnaghi University of Surrey