Questions about the Internet of Things
Perhaps the best definition anyone has ever given me for the Internet of Things was from Anders Wallgren in an interview for StickyMinds. Wallgren, the CTO of Electric Cloud, told me, “The Internet of Things, very simply, is just everything in the whole world is going to have software in it pretty soon.”
Wallgren would go on to talk about how it seems that everything we are carrying around now is integrated with software in some way or another, and he is right. Our lives are becoming a series of things all connected by the Internet.
This makes for an exciting time for a lot of people, as their expectations and quality of life are improved by the increased functionality and connectivity of their favorite objects. But, for some, it is a time of much uncertainty.
In his article on LinkedIn Richie Etwaru of Cegedim outlines some of the top unanswered questions about the Internet of Things.
Jumping right into the deep end, the article ask: How will things in the Internet of Things come to be defined? At what point is something a citizen of the Internet of Things society, and at what point is it just an appliance with an app?
Diving deeper, one of the pivotal points that Etwaru brings up is that it is still uncertain what the boundaries and precise nature are for connectivity between various IoT tech. Will there be a standard trust level for things connecting with each other, and how much of that connectivity will rely on the user? That is to say, will there be a standard for things connecting to each other based on proximity, ownership registration, and/or functionality? What kinds of data and how much can be sent and received between each thing on the network?
These questions then lead to the next logical question for any pessimist: How will security work with IoT and who will police it? If security is broken, will it ever be fixed and who will fix it? Increased connectivity might mean there are more opportunities for security breaches. Once a citizen of your IoT is infected, how will it be kept from infecting others in its IoT group?
Etwaru's article brings up some other valid questions: How will commerce work and be integrated into IoT? What will the currency standard be? And, thinking broadly, what does the IoT mean for the desktop and its role in our tech-driven society?
Regardless of the uncertainty surrounding this evolution in technology, IoT aims to offer an improved quality of life. However, achieving that improved quality of life will likely come with a few hiccups, failures, and more questions along the way. Hopefully, it will all be worth it.
What questions do you have about the Internet of Things and how it will affect our future?
