Personal eSpace and Personal Smart Spaces

This paper takes the physical notion of personal space as the basis for a vision of an analogous logical notion of a personal eSpace. Convergence between mobile and Internet technologies and the future enhancement of both will result in a world which is so complex, so open to abuse and so alien to our common sense reasoning that automated protection mechanisms based on understandable metaphors will be required. The future Internet and pervasive systems are the stage upon which the ideas in this paper are developed. Challenges to personal security in the electronic world, both current and future, are identified. The vision of a personal space is presented along with some initial thoughts on how it might be instantiated using intelligent agents and a calculus of trust. The paper concludes with a brief description of the personal smart space paradigm (a form of personal eSpace focusing on smart spaces) which is being developed by the EUFP7 project Persist.