It’s time to condense all I’ve seen, heard, and learned about the IoT into a fun, easy-to-remember guide. Without further ado, here are Five (5) Things About the Internet of Things: 1. It’s the end-state of Moore’s Law.
It’s easy enough to debunk the IoT as “nothing new.” After all, we’ve have embedded systems for years. We’ve had devices connected to the Internet for decades; the very definition of a network means things are connected to it. But now that the invariable, self-fulfilling prophecy of Moore’s Law has resulted in a rise from about 10,000 transistors on a chip in 1980 to more than 2.5 billion today, our systems are powerful enough and fast enough to deliver long-imagined dreams.
There simply was not enough bandwidth even a decade ago to the dataflows from tens of billions of sensors, billions of phones and tablets, and tens of millions of enterprises. Systems were not powerful enough to process such large amounts of data, nor could they handle software sophisticated enough to make sense of it all.
Now, everything is up to speed. Moore’s Law will continue, future systems will continue to make past systems look quaint and comical. But the paradigm will shift no more. The Internet of Things is the culmination of processing power, smart devices, and ubiquitous networking we’ve been talking about for a long time.
2. It’s not going away.
As the IoT is a culimination of great ideas and steady technological advance, it’s not a fad, flash in the pan, or trend. Just as the Worldwide Web upped the ante significantly on the software side for what we expect from the Internet, the IoT does so on the hardware side.
The IoT is as permanent as the Web. Its current lack of standards guarantee it, because the IoT does not have a single way of expressing itself. The welter of protocols and architectures constitute it today will simply over time, then re-complicate, then repeat. (Look at the history of PC standards battles as an example. Just as one issue gets settled, another springs up.)
The IoT’s capabilities will expand as human innovation continues to think of new and creative ways to use its tools. It’s here to stay.
3. It’s bigger than a breadbox
Just as it’s hard for the human mind to literally imagine a time period of, say, 250 million years, let alone a distance of 250 million light-years, it’s hard to get a grip on, say, 250 million terabytes.
Yet even that figure – also expressed as 250 exabytes – is only about 25% of the amount of global IP traffic expected in 2015. It’s a small fraction of expected traffic a decade from now.
I and many others have written about the challenge of building enough systems and storage to handle this amount of traffic. The figure runs into the trillions of dollars today – but given that storage costs, for example, have dropped by a factor of one million over the past 25 years, we can expect similar mind-boggling progress in the future. As I said, it’s not going away.
4. It’s about people, not breadboxes and refrigerators
One seemingly irresistable human tendency is to take the most ridiculous aspect of something and use it to ridicule the entire idea. So, if you don’t like baseball, show fat guys in uniforms and players spitting. Don’t like California? Bring up tired cliches about lifestyles and talk about earthquakes. Skeptical of this Internet thingy? Breathlessly report about how people commit crimes with it.
With the IoT, the smart refrigerator serves as the all-purpose whipping boy. Why do I need my fridge to tell me I’m running low on eggs? Why, great-grandma knew that just by looking in there, and she kept things plenty of cold in those days when the iceman really did cometh. What if the refrigerator turns into HAL on me and opens my garage door, turns up my thermostat, or tries to burn the house down by shorting something out? I’m sure not gonna pay thousands of dollars on such nonsense.
The creation of smart breadboxes (if there is such a thing anymore), toasters, and refrigerators will proceed apace, either accepted by the market or not. Meanwhile, wearables will move beyond Google Glass to less intrusive, less annoying, more useful devices. Sensors in shirts from Ralph Lauren for professional tennis players are in the news currently. Beacons on belts, beacons on watches, beacons on beacons will impact shopping, pedestrian flow, and security.
Meanwhile, vast industries such as manufacturing, health care, and transportation will become more adept, more efficient, and more widespread. Smart buildings, grids, cities, and nations will be ever more in the news.
But all of this wondrous IoT will be under the control of people. If you don’t want a smart appliance, don’t buy one. If you want your business to be in a smart building, rent there. Whether or not you want your tax dollars to go to smart infrastructure, support your position.
If the IoT was determined by the ultimate end-state of Moore’s Law, then the ultimate end-state of the IoT will be determined by people.
5. It could be the worst idea ever.
Because of #4, the IoT could be the worst idea ever. Human beings have a knack for creating great works of art and launching things to the stars, while failing to act civilized on the most basic level.
Many of the brilliant scientists involved in creating the first atomic bomb feared for what powerful people would do with it. To date, this technology’s satanic power has not been unleashed on humankind since its first and only uses, but the analog hands of the nuclear clock are still poised very close to high noon.
The IoT carries with it similar intoxicating, dangerous power. Recent years have shown the pervasiveness of focused domestic spying in the US (and presumably elsewhere), in the name of security. The IoT only puts more powerful tools into the hands of those who would control entire populations in the name of societal good.
If I had the time and talent, I’d write a dystopic novel about a world in the not-distant future in which embedded subcutaneous sensors now run our lives, controlled by megalomaniacs and morons near and far. The movie “Idiocracy” gives us an idea of this world. What if this film turns out to be optimistic?
Yet, as I said, the IoT is not going away. So let’s make the best of it.
Let’s work to solve humanity’s big problems, overcome resignation and cynicism about our leaders, and take the time now and then to enjoy a nicely cooled beverage from a smart bottle stored in a smart refrigerator delivered to us from a smart company by a “smart drone” (oxymoron alert) that flies in a smart city’s smart grid in this IoT that we’ve created.