Today I will be talking about the Internet Of Things. If you do not know what the Internet Of Things is I will explain, put simply the Internet Of Things is anything that is not a traditional computer that is connected to the Internet. It could be a watch, or a bed, or a pill box or a switch to a lamp, or a thermostat, or really anything that has a sensor that relays information from a thing to the internet. This may not sound like a big deal but it is. Basically the Internet of Things will allow vast amounts of data to be gathered, and then all this data can be used to better the human condition, if used properly.
There are four main sectors to the internet of things as far as I am concerned: commercial, medical, industrial, and automotive. Each will shape the world in different ways, and there is plenty of crossover between these four sectors, but ultimately each one will change its respective industry drastically.
The commercial sector of the internet of things consist of things like smart watches, in home assistance, light bulbs that change colors, smart tvs, and anything else that is considered smart. All these things collect data about their use, and add functionality to mundane objects that would otherwise be boring. The applications of this new technology allows the user to save money, live more comfortably, and for things to be more convenient. This does come at the cost of some privacy, but honestly if you have a smartphone, chances are that you have already sacrificed that privacy for convenience.
The medical sector of the internet of things is going to be huge. Smart watches can track your heart rate, and exercise patterns, this could be used by medical professionals to better diagnose conditions and provide better treatment. Smart hospital beds are another thing that compose the internet of things, they can adjust to the patients needs, and monitor their health. We are very close to seeing actual cybernetics for the disabled, there are already prototypes that allow the user to control the use of an arm and receive feelings from the robotic arm. There are also smart pill boxes that track if a patient is taking their pills as prescribed. These and other innovations in hardware and software are going to provide new health options that would of been considered science fiction just a decade ago.
The industrial sector of the internet of things is all about robots and inventory control. The robots are coming, and while they are probably not going to be killer robots they will take a lot of manufacturing jobs. But there is hope, most studies suggest that these robots will produce more high paying jobs then they take. Hopefully the workforce can adjust, eventually it is my belief that the internet of things will lead to the singularity and a post scarcity economy, but more on that later. The other side to the industrial sector revolution will be a supply chain and inventory management revolution. Companies will be able to track exactly how every aspect of their supply chain works and where the bottlenecks are. If a shipment is late a company will be able to tell exactly why, what is in the shipment, how it will affect manufacturing, and how it can be fixed in the future. This is already being done by some tech companies using RFID chips, little chips that require no power source but interact with radio waves, this can work as a shipping manifest and confirm an object’s location in the real world.
The last and perhaps most disruptive change coming from the internet of things is Automated Cars. An estimated 3% of the US workforce are drives, if you live in a large city think of all the Uber and Lyft drivers, and suddenly they are out of business. I was fortunate enough to share a ride with one of their engineers and they said that self driving cars that are good enough for ride sharing are still at least 5 years if not more away. So don’t panic yet, but know that soon 3% of all jobs in the US will be taken by automated cars and trucks. I have actually rode in a self driving car, it is a little unnerving the first time, but actually it does an amazing job. The data shows that already self driving cars tend to be safer the human operated cars. This trend is much like the horse and buggy verses the car back in the nineteen hundreds. It is going to take a while to pick up steam, but soon it will be common place and people will think nothing of it once the technology takes hold.
Let us shift gears now, let us talk about security and privacy. First let us talk about security. All things on the internet should be protected in some way. Hackers are a sneaky bunch and if there is an exploit to be found someone will eventually find it, we can not stop all exploits but we should do our best to limit the vulnerabilities. So why should we worry if our smart light bulb has security or not what is the worst a hacker could do, turn off the lights? Wrong, the worst the hacker could do is use the light bulb in a DDOS attack, a DDOS attack is where you have a bunch of devices ping a single network all at once, or in other words it is an internet traffic jam. No one likes traffic jams in real life, now thing if there where a traffic jam to say 911, during an emergency, this would be terrible. This is why it is irresponsible to not have proper network security in place. It allows hackers to use your devices for their nefarious purposes. All networked devices should at the very least be behind a firewall, this allows for very basic protection and is usually adequate for most users.
Now let us talk about privacy. Boy is it great that all these services do not cost nine ninety five a month, but what then are companies getting out of the service? The short answer is your data, and no I do not mean things like your pictures, although that is not out of the realm of possibilities if you use cloud storage. I am talking about training data for machine learning. Why do you think voice activated assistants do not cost anything, it is because you are the product. It takes lots of data to train a machine, if Apple had to pay for engineers to submit voice samples of every language and every accent to Siri it would cost millions at least, so instead they offer all the goodness that is Siri for free in exchange for the free training data you provide. This is a common industry practice. You may or may not be aware that Amazon’s Alexa is always listening, but to be honest Amazon could care less about your personal lives, what they are after is the precious training data for machine learning, and your usage habits. So that they can build large scale models of purchasing data to feed to their machine learning algorithms to make better predictions about what people will purchase in the future. So if large companies can hear your every conversation should you be worried, no not unless you are a famous celebrity or a spy or something outlandish like that. To put it into perspective there is so much data generated by these devices that it is humanly impossible for anyone to go it all. So you are probably safe due to the fact that you are just too boring to be worth spending hundreds of hours on.
Now let us talk about the fun part, the all mighty Singularity that is to come. I like the idea of the Singularity very much, I believe it is humanities best option to save the species from all the horrors of the future. I believe that it is ultimately the Singularity that will save us from global warming, eradicate war, end hunger, and possibly lead to the end of death itself. How will all this happen, very slowly, but so long as we do not mess up and continue to advance as a species I believe that eventually humans and machines will become indistinguishable. If humans and machines eventually become indistinguishable then there would be no need for most material things such as food, all we would need is energy and computers which are mostly made of silica which is one of the most abundant elements on earth. This may sound like science fiction but I would say look at Neural Link, and the potential it offers. In short it is a revolutionary device that will allow the brain to talk directly to computers. I believe that this will eventually lead to a new cultural and scientific revolution, imagine being able to share thoughts, ideas and emotions with anyone. Imagine being able to make art not limited by anything but the human imagination, the mind’s eye and the human soul. These are all very far off, but we are heading in that direction, for now think of all the people with motor control disabilities that this technology will be able to help. Imagine being given the gift of speech again. That is what this technology promises.
While the internet of things has the potential to revolutionize the world yet again, we should be careful with this new technology, and realize that nothing is free and there is always a price. The price is privacy and new unknown threats to cyberspace. The internet of things will allow us to gather vast amounts of data that can be used in machine learning to revolutionize the way we live. Overall the internet of things has tremendous potential and could lead to a wonderful future.
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