What kind of smart society do we want to live in? How can IoT players contribute to strengthen Europe’s society without falling into paradigms of extreme privatisation (US) and extreme surveillance (China)? We Europeans can envisage the Next Generation Internet as a coherent set of centralised protocols that can be operated in a fully decentralised way: a new conception of the techno-political landscape tuned to the reality of what is happening in every domain of human activity; to be supported, assisted and guided by secure real time data streams of sensor input, to bring big data, AI and dynamic analytics into the heart of decision making and to eventually reform the EU as a platform of services for all.