The Internet of Things may sound like a rather pretentious Orange Prize-nominated novel. But within a few years you will be as familiar with the phrase as you are today with other once arcane expressions such as blog, tweet and Skype.
The Internet of Things in fact describes the next level in web connectivity. Today, billions of us live permanently online, with our smartphones keeping us in touch if we are not next to a computer. Increasingly, however, our machines are connected to the internet to communicate with us — or with one another — to make life (theoretically) more comfortable and convenient for us.
Typically, we don't even know that our gadgetry is in dialogue with fellow computers. My satnav, for example, has a traffic feature that tells me accurately when and where there's a jam on my intended route, and how long it will add to my journey. It does this by transmitting to TomTom, via a built-in SIM card, the progress of my journey, and comparing it with others' progress on the same road.
Using not dissimilar technology — in this case tiny RFID (radio frequency identification) tags — supermarkets and many other businesses have for some years been keeping tabs on the whereabouts of pallets and boxes, tracking them online.
In a full-on Internet of Things world, companies will be able to keep a meticulous eye on stock levels, while dozens, then hundreds, of our everyday objects will also be equipped with chips of minuscule cost that connect them permanently to the web. Theoretically, the Internet of Things could allow 50 to 100 trillion objects to be tracked worldwide. With every human being calculated to own 1,000 to 5,000 objects, lost socks, passports, wallets, keys, even pets, as well as stolen property, could become a thing of the past.
As with a lot of technologies that become credible only slowly, the Internet of Things has spent many years as a quirky curiosity rather than a serious proposition. Even now, some of the more leftfield futurologists sound a little unrealistic when they speculate about the Internet of Things. For instance, in his latest book, Physics of the Future, theoretical physics professor Michio Kaku of the City University of New York suggests that by 2100 our clothes will contain chips that will call the emergency services when we are, say, left unconscious in a road accident, and also transmit vital medical data to them. In a real world where mobile phone signals are wildly unreliable, I am prepared to bet that such a scenario will simply never happen.
But it pays to be careful what you laugh at. A couple of years ago, a Paris Internet of Things specialist, Withings, brought out a bathroom scale that displays your weight on the web to anyone who is interested. It was seen as an oddity, but now it is ploughing ahead with internet-connected blood pressure monitors, baby alarms and more. Use your imagination, and suddenly these things don't seem quite so eccentric.
One of Britain's leading Internet of Things experts, Philip Sheldrake, is adamant that 2011 is the beginning of a surge in the technology. "Unbeknownst to the layman, it is starting to happen," he says. "Fiat has introduced a USB stick called ecoDrive to upload driving information and share online, you have the Nike-Apple tie up with running shoes that speak to iPods and supermarket freezers using SIM-based detectors to report temperature increases. All around you, you're starting to interact with an environment that's sensing and reporting."
But Sheldrake also warns against the crazier applications. "The trap I see people falling into is going crazy with what could be rather than what market forces will actually drive. I look at two things. Would it be good for society, or is it likely to be profitable to someone? If you can't answer yes to one of those, then the kind of scenarios people are painting as possible are unlikely to happen because there's no motivation.
"It's not to be discounted, though," he argues. "There's not a single area of human enterprise that isn't hugely impacted by the Internet of Things — or will be."
blog comments powered by
